ARTIST George Frost’s Cork city home is full of paintings of landscapes, portraits and scenic spots, including an attractive depiction of Ross Castle in Killarney.
For 79-year-old George, art is something he is passionate about, and now he wants to give lessons in it to senior citizens, preferably through the medium of television.
His thinking is that TV art would attract a relatively big audience.
And there are practical considerations. George is in fine fettle apart from suffering from a bad back, which makes it difficult to teach a class as he would have to bend down to see the art work and give advice to students.
Over the years, George, who is originally from London, has taught art with the Vocational Education Committee (VEC) and has had a number of exhibitions, including one at Cork Airport last summer which was a great success.
He has also exhibited at Bishopstown Library, where he sold most of the paintings on show.
George presented Micheál Martin with a painting of the Dáil sitting and also presented UCC’s history department with a painting portraying the 1916 Rising.
Despite having no formal training – apart from technical drawing expertise – George feels he has a lot to impart to older people that may be feeling isolated and without a sense of purpose.
Art gets him up in the morning and he often works a full day, painting in the studio in his home.
At junior school, he showed A talent for art, doing copies of the work of established artists. When he went on to Grammar School, he studied technical drawing and excelled at it in his A-Levels.
George’s technical drawing teacher suggested that he should pursue the subject and qualify to teach it. An interview at Furzedown College, just outside London, was arranged. But it transpired that the course would take four years, plus a further year to become a teacher.
“Talking to my parents about this, we thought it was an awful long time studying to earn a basic salary in a junior teaching role,” recalls George.
I applied for a bank job in Nat West Bank in London and got on very well there. After a year, I was promoted as chief cashier for foreign currency.
“At the time, there was free parking outside the bank. The bank manager had a Morris Minor while I had a Jaguar. We used to joke about that.”
Clearly, George is good with money. He managed to save his earnings from his two jobs as a school boy, doing a paper round and a milk round, which allowed him to buy his stylish car.
This father-of-four sons and one daughter moved to Cork 47 years ago, encouraged by the woman who was to become his wife.
Beth Gould, who passed away in 2018, was from Barrack Street. She worked in Boots in London before getting married to George. He had to study Roman Catholicism in order to marry Beth in Ireland.
He was brought up in the Greek Orthodox tradition, his father having been Cypriot. George says it is very similar to Catholicism.
But, as it turned out, the letter of permission from Rome to marry didn’t arrive in time for the wedding that had been arranged in Cork. So George and Beth got married in London before moving to Cork.
He applied for a bank job in his adopted city, but says that, despite a glowing reference from Nat West, he couldn’t get employment in Cork as “you needed a GAA reference at the time. It was a general policy that you had to have played GAA sports to get into the bank.”
Undeterred, George worked in the building trade for a while, in his wife’s family business.
Having been told he would make a great salesman, he went on to set himself up selling in the bread business. However, when he contracted septicaemia, his doctor advised him to give up work as stress would not be good for his condition.
Losing his wife was a big blow for George. He says that, recently, he woke at 4.30am (a habit developed from the bread business) and looked at the picture of Beth facing him. “She was asking me a question: ‘Don’t forget my birthday’.
“My wife’s birthday was in a few weeks’ time,” he explained. “Yvette (his daughter) used to buy flowers for me to give to her as a gift.
I cried and said to Yvette it did me good. I had held back the tears for six years. All of a sudden, they burst out.
George jokingly refers to Yvette as his ‘manager’ because she is the one that has organised the various exhibitions he has had.
Now, he is keen to share his knowledge with senior citizens who might discover they have a talent for painting.
Having taught art at Tory Top Library in Cork city, he recalls how difficult it was for him, “leaning over people, trying to teach with the sweat pouring off me”.
Now, George would like to interest TV programme makers in televising art classes given by him. He says that they could be filmed outdoors in Crosshaven during the summer. He often paints in the sailing village, generating interest in his art from passersby.
It’s all about inclusiveness in old age. George doesn’t even want to be paid for it. He reckons his proposal could even help save the government health expenditure as it would be therapeutic for senior citizens.
Totally altruistic, George could teach us all a lesson or two.
