'You fall in love with a person who's maybe the opposite sex, or maybe not'

By his own admission, Kevin Sharkey's life has been 'a bit mad'. He has plumbed the emotional and financial depths, and resurfaced. He once pretended he was in the IRA to get to work on time. And his romantic history is as storied as his amazing beginning in the world. Valerie Shanley talks to an artist on the comeback trail. Portrait by Mark Condren

Colourful history: 'Neighbours used to put money down the side of my pram for the "black babies". My sisters would be mad with jealousy because they didn't get any'

Kevin Sharkey

• 1
• 2

There is much that we already know about Kevin Sharkey. He's a self-taught artist whose paintings fetched five-figure sums until his galleries went bust two years ago. He used to co-host RTé's 1980s music series Megamix. He's the only black person ever to appear on Father Ted, uttering to a bemused nun the immortal lines "Sure how would I know? I'm from Donegal." He sang on The Late Late Show with a band called Blonde Jesus in 2008. He was engaged to be married the same year to Bibi, a woman from Moldova 20 years his junior. He was in a three-year relationship with Ade Antigha, a former London police officer, before it became strictly business. He has unshakeable self-belief. He has, as they would say in his home county, enough chat for 10 rows of teeth.

There's also his genius for rising from the ashes, and the walls of the Francis Street gallery are once again filled with his signature abstract expressionist paintings. These new works – the culmination of Sharkey's artistic endeavours for the past two years – sell for a lot less than in the heady days when he also had galleries in Mayfair and Ibiza. After suffering bankruptcy and debts of €250,000, his creative star is in the ascendant again; the Opera Gallery in Paris recently invited him to submit work there.

Every now and then as we chat, he darts off to grab a newspaper cutting, a photograph or a scribbled-down quote to illustrate a point. He has a Boney M album cover listing a song he wrote for them: 'Everybody Wants to Dance Like Josephine Baker'. "There wasn't much black music played in Donegal when I was growing up. So that was a big honour for me." He says he wrote music for Bob Geldof too. But it's Gandalf, rather than Geldof, who inspires his latest mantra. He quotes the wondrous wizard from The Lord of the Rings: "All you have to do is decide what to do with the time given to you." And he has finally decided. "I want to become one of Ireland's most famous artists," says the 48-year-old whose love life is often viewed with the same kind of wonder as his paintings.

He shows me a photograph from his wedding. His wedding in the early l990s that is, not the one called off in 2008 to Bibi. Apparently that didn't work out because he wanted kids and she didn't. He speaks fondly of the women he has loved. And the man.

"I got married in Fulham Registry Office, much to my mother's horror. We were together for about three years, then we drifted. She went travelling and fell for her boss. She was lovely, very easy going. Then I met Ade and was in a relationship with him for three years. That was a surprise to me because I wasn't expecting that to happen. It was just after my Dad died, and I think when a father figure dies, you become more adult, more definite in your choices. Ade is a wonderful man. But after about three years, we realised we would be much better together as friends than partners."

Sharkey never saw himself as a public flag bearer for an alternative sexuality but speaks candidly about a subject most people skirt around. "Sexuality is very complex. I was confused for years over my sexuality. It has always been in my nature to have girlfriends and boyfriends. I was bisexual. And that was something I didn't feel comfortable with because I felt I was sitting on the fence.

"But as I got older, I accepted that I was never going to change. In interviews, I was never asked directly about it. But if someone had asked me if I was gay, I would have said 'no' because I'm not solely attracted to men. To be gay is to be attracted only to your own sex and have no feelings for the opposite sex. People want you to be one way or the other. But humans can't always be neatly categorised. And until you fall in love you don't know. You fall in love with a person who's maybe the opposite sex, or maybe not.

"The reality is that the very core of what you are is a loving being. Discussion rarely reaches that level and people simply equate 'gay' with sex. It's not discussed in the context of loving someone. Men especially are so threatened. I would have known guys who didn't want to be seen talking to me in case of what others might think. That's a huge insecurity on their part. A lot of men need to get in touch with their gentler side."

Like so many, he grew up in a country, and a county, being "told about sex by men who supposedly weren't having any. And if they were, it was the wrong kind. It was surreal, being instructed 'in the ways of the flesh' by those who had no experience of it." A child of the '60s, he hasn't yet seen A Single Man, the Tom Ford-directed film version of Christopher Isherwood's book. Nor has he seen the repression as expressed in another '60s-set classic, Mad Men. He makes a note to watch the series on YouTube, and to catch the film. Sharkey got rid of his television years ago and hasn't looked back since, he says. He rarely listens to the radio because there's not enough music and "too much talk from old windbags". He's damning about celebrity culture, viewing it as little more than gossip. "Gossip is always negative. People sitting around for hours giving out about this one or that one, and I always think, well what are you doing, sitting on your arse complaining about everyone else. They don't have any dreams. They don't have any plans."

He had his own experience of a celebrity spat through the pages of this newspaper two years when artist Guggi Rowan was allegedly unsympathetic to Sharkey's admission of bankruptcy. To the Dubliner's suggestion that "maybe Kevin hasn't been kicked in the balls enough", the Donegal man referred to Guggi's work as "painting old bowls" and added for good measure that "if it wasn't for his friendship with Bono, Guggi wouldn't sell anything at all". It was all basically "shit stirring" says Sharkey.

"I got a message on my answering machine afterwards from him saying, 'It's Guggi here and I'm supposed to have said some terrible things about you which were blown up out of proportion.' I texted him back to say he was a wonderfully talented man, an inspiration who has made it possible for people like me to do what I do now, that I have seen his wife and family who are beautiful people and that he must be a good man to have those people around him. After that, it's all rock and roll."

The story of how baby Kevin Sharkey, born in a Navan Road nursing home in 1961, ended up in Donegal is also one of being surrounded by good people. And a newspaper ad spotted by chance. The family told him of how on Christmas Eve one of his young sisters ran in with a copy of the paper asking, "Mam, can we get a black baby for Christmas, they're selling them in the Evening Press?" In between an ad for lawnmower repairs and hand-knitted Aran jumpers ran the line "Good home wanted for two coloured babies, Nicholas and Kevin".

"My mother saw it and thought it would be fabulous; my father said, 'God, you already have seven, how will you manage?' But she did. And that's how it started. But you can imagine how much of a curiosity I was. Neighbours used to put money down the side of my pram for the 'black babies'. My sisters would be mad with jealousy because they didn't get any." He met Nicholas many years later, although the two are not brothers. Growing up, the attitude was very much if you're not white, then you're black, he says while holding out his arm for inspection. "I think they call it 'mocha' nowadays," he says, laughing, while adding, "I think my mother felt, oh say nothing about his colour and we'll just get on with it. And there were so many good people there, great neighbours like Rosie Boyle. Goodness personified, really."

If he felt at home growing up in Donegal, he was equally happy in front of a TV camera and went on to present Megamix with Flo MacSweeney in the l980s. Then came another music series in l987 with Tyne Tees, The Roxy, co-hosted with DJ Kid Jensen. He took a weekly flight from Heathrow up to Newcastle for the show, but as time went on, he became consistently late. In a 'readers of a sensitive nature should turn the page now moment', Sharkey reveals how he saved his job with the most unorthodox of 'late' excuses.

"I woke up in a panic because I had been warned the previous week that I would be sacked. In the rush to the airport, the taxi driver said we weren't going to make the flight. I asked him to pull in to the Little Chef restaurant and got on the phone there to the airport and [adopting a thick Belfast accent], said, 'Hullo, this is the Provisional IRA; there's a bomb on the plane on the flight to Newcastle.' When I got up there, I discovered that Cliff Richard, Bananarama, Chris Rea and Rick Astley had spent the entire afternoon on the tarmac at Heathrow, on and off the plane with their luggage. They finally arrived at six o'clock, but should have been there at two. And me there already, innocently waiting for them."

He was, he admits, "a bit mad then". But it's art that saved him from himself. He says 'Despair', painted in 2001 when he was going through a very dark phase, was a key moment. "I was on Prozac, having counselling, having to deal with a lot of anger. But all the time I kept painting. It was the most constructive, healing thing I could do. And when I sell a painting now, it's still like the first time, I still get that thrill that it says something to someone else. As long as I'm making something, whether it's a painting, a song, or a meal, it's all creative and about making some man or woman happy."

There's also Blaheen of the Roads, his comic drag creation that has become a YouTube curiosity in the most unlikely places. "She's had thousands of hits everywhere from Seoul to Argentina – even though they don't understand a word she's saying. It's the visual of this big black man running around in a poncho and a wig. She's the Donegal antithesis of a girly girl."

He's single for now. He jokingly says all of his emotional and physical energies are going into painting, rather than "thinking of ways to get my leg over". But he speaks wistfully of the two times in his life he was deeply in love. Once was with Ade, the other time with Marianella – "the most beautiful girl in the world" – who he met several years ago but retains strong feelings for. He tends to fall in love at this time of year he says.

"Falling in love is the most magical thing in the world. You're attracted, you feel attractive. That strong chemistry doesn't last, but you can still have friendship. And there are a lot of couples out there, straight and gay, who just love each other but it's not necessarily physical. After a certain time together it's not about the great sex anymore, it's about love, support, companionship. And family. I have always loved the idea of having a family of my own, to have kids, to come home to all of that."

He's gazing out at the lengthening day light on Francis Street. Spring is already here.

» The 500 Collection opens at 80 Francis Street, Dublin 8, today. All paintings €500

» Blaheen of the Roads appears Wednesday nights in April at the comedy club in the
Legal Eagle, Dublin 7