“As a man he was compact, concentrated and charismatic. There was an electric charge when you met him.” Michael Longley.

Mo McDevitt talks to decorative landscape painter Colin Middleton’s daughter, Jane Middleton, at Dickon Hall Ltd in the Crescent Arts Centre at a special exhibition celebrating what would have been Colin Middleton’s 100th Birthday.

“When I walked into the gallery for the first time. I felt I’d arrived home. I could feel their presence.” Jane Middleton.

Born in 1910 in Belfast and trained at the Belfast College of Art, Colin’s work ranged from poetry to music but he is most renowned for his surrealist landscape paintings. Colin passed away in Dublin in 1983 and this exhibition celebrates some of his most presitigious work drawn from galleries and private collectors as a celebration of his life.

His daughter and artist, Jane Middleton reminisces about her father’s time working in the family linen industry and how it helped to shape an interest and practice in art. Life at the family’s Camden Street home was characterised by a flow of diverse and creative artists and her father’s fascination with the ‘collective unconscious’ which he felt resided in the audience’s understanding of his work.