CULTURE
ARTIST EILEEN SCHAER HITS A MUSICAL NOTE Words: Suzy Holland Image: Eileen Schaer
Not only are there two Eileen Schaer paintings on display in the public rooms of the new London hotel Flemings, Mayfair, but she’s also been the subject of a music magazine interview. When she was contacted by writer Owen Peters to talk about musical influences on her art she was, it’s fair to say, a little perturbed. What on earth could she say that would interest him? A great deal it turns out. Eileen was born and brought up in Liverpool, and when her parents ran a restaurant/pub near The Cavern, the four Beatles and other music legends dropped in for a meal and to watch TV in a little side room, and the young Eileen was soon to be found hanging out with friends and musicians in the Mardi Gras club, The Philharmonic Hall and the Liverpool University Students Union, and listening to poetry readings from the likes of Roger McGough, Brian Pattern and Andy Roberts. Anyone too young to remember the 1960s, or whose knowledge of the exciting Liverpool scene of those times is a bit sketchy, will be enthralled by the stories about Eileen’s younger life and the influence music from then and more recently from India has had on her art and it’s perhaps the insights into her younger life as she moved from Liverpool with husband, artist David Fletcher, first to London and then the Isle of Man which are most illuminating. Although Eileen’s social network growing up included the Liverpool Art College, it wasn’t as an artist – she is self-taught and didn’t pick up a paintbrush
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until 1970 - David and Eileen rubbed shoulders with some of the major names in the art world of the time and she took more of interested in other people’s work and styles, despite having her own accepted into Royal Academy Summer Shows and other London galleries. Owen Peters is just as interested in Eileen’s art as in her musical tastes and his gentle yet probing interview sheds an interesting light on her practice and her works and Eileen comes over here just as she does in person: modest and unassuming with a delightfully wicked sense of humour. If you like her paintings, then you’ll love this interview. (The full interview is available to read on the US’s longest running online music magazine: www.furious.com/perfect/ eileenschaer)
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