80th birthday bash of one of Ireland's greatest living painters

TP Flanagan got a birthday bash and a half this week. His 80th birthday was celebrated at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland HQ with family and friends, including the Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney and his wife Marie. The photo was taken in TP's house with Seamus, Marie, TP and his wife Sheila just before they headed to the birthday celebration.

Terry is a much loved man. Heaney dedicated "Bogland" to Terry, a poetic compliment to Terry's 1967 painting "Boglands" (for Seamus Heaney).

Leading artists, writers and painters including Heaney, Basil Blackshaw and Jack Packenham gathered at a special reception in McNeice House in Belfast to celebrate Terry's two score years and ten.

And while honouring a genius painter of landscape they were also celebrating the man, someone who is great company, full of stories and mischievous humour.

I know what good company TP is. Last year I spent a day in his childhood home of Fermanagh with him and his wife Sheila for an artsextra special.

We all piled into a hire car, me, the producer, the Flanagans and the sound man driving. TP refused the front seat and let Sheila sit there. I'm not a great car traveller and reluctantly squashed myself into the back seat between Terry and the producer, thinking that if I scanned the horizon I might ward off nausea. But as we headed down the M1 to Fermanagh Terry told story after story which made me forget any carsickness. 

He took me around his childhood haunts, from a wood outside Enniskillen, to a muddy field which inspired much of his bogland painting, even gallantly helping me put my wellies on and finally we sat on a bench beside Lough Erne. And he talked and he remembered and he painted with words.

And then we all got back into the car again. And I didn't want the M1 to end.

You can hear TP Flanagan on Arts Extra here