When I was a three-year-old wee nipper the No.26 bus was my transport of choice for my daily childcare at grandma’s, not that I had much say in it. It came every twenty minutes and seemed an age if you missed one. Occasionally, when the snaking convoys of Ford Prefects and Vauxhall Victors were abundant, the No.26 would come three or even four at a time.
From Che Guevara to Thin Lizzy: Jim FitzPatrick s 10 greatest hits
From Che Guevara and Thin Lizzy, to Sinead O Connor and an imprisoned Palestinian teenager, the veteran artist tells the story behind some of his best pieces through the decades
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COVER IMAGE : Jim FitzPatrick at home in Dublin. Photograph Moya Nolan
Jim FitzPatrick, 77, is one of Ireland’s foremost artists. Art is in his veins. His grandfather, the Cork-born political cartoonist Thomas FitzPatrick, was one of the most famous illustrators of the Victorian Age, with his work prominent in Punch magazine, for example.
Growing up on the northside of Dublin in the 1950s, FitzPatrick used to feast on British and American comics, including the work of Tarzan illustrator Burne Hogarth, cut out from copies of the Chicago Herald Tribune, which a relative in America used to post to him.