John Sheehy Started Painting at 51. Two New One-of-a-Kind Etchings Just Landed at Atom.
A roofer turned Arts Council Collection artist, a pair of hand-pulled etchings, and the most quietly compelling story on the Atom shop right now.
The most interesting biography on Atom's roster doesn't belong to a Central Saint Martins graduate or a name from a glossy magazine. It belongs to a man who spent over twenty years on London roofs before picking up a brush at fifty-one and ending up in the Arts Council Collection.
John Sheehy has just dropped two new one-of-a-kind etchings at Atom. That feels like a moment worth marking.
Who is John Sheehy?
Born in 1949 in South-West Ireland, John Joseph Sheehy moved to London as a child and worked in the building trade — mostly as a roofer — for more than two decades. He started painting in 1999, aged fifty-one, encouraged by The Big Issue arts group. In the years since, he's built a prolific self-taught practice across painting, monoprint, linocut, ceramics, sculpture, poetry and playwriting.
Sheehy's work is held in the Arts Council Collection — the UK's largest national loan collection of modern and contemporary British art — and has been shown at Studio Voltaire, where he had his first institutional solo exhibition, and at Outpost. Atom Gallery showed his solo An Introspective in 2015, and continues to be the place where new work by Sheehy turns up.
That trajectory — building site to public collection without an art school in the middle — is the kind of thing the British art world doesn't quite know what to do with. It usually files him under "outsider artist" and moves on. The work itself doesn't need the label.
What just landed: "Late at Night" and "Summer Thoughts"
Summer Thoughts is a one-of-a-kind original etching by Irish artist John Sheehy. Hand-pulled by the artist, this work features impressionist markings on a graphic depiction of a woman on her mobile phone. This piece is an original 1 of 1, signed by the artist.
Artist John Sheehy
Size 35 X 57cm (42 × 64cm with frame)
Medium Etching
Edition 1 of 1
Framing Only available framed in black
Two new etchings are now on Atom's New In page, both one-of-a-kind originals hand-pulled by the artist, both framed in black.
"Late at Night" (£270) is a small, graphic image of a woman on her mobile phone, worked over with impressionist marks. Framed dimensions roughly 36 × 56cm.
"Summer Thoughts" (£300) is the slightly larger companion — same composition, same subject, different ink decisions. 35 × 57cm work, 42 × 64cm with the frame.
What you're looking at is rare territory. These aren't editions of a hundred. They're not even editions of ten. They are 1 of 1. Sheehy made the plate, inked it, pulled it, signed it. That single sheet is the entire print run.
Most prints you'll see on a contemporary gallery wall are limited editions — fifty, a hundred, two hundred copies pulled from the same screen or block. That's not a criticism; editions are how good art gets affordable. But a 1-of-1 etching sits in a different category. You're not buying a copy. You're buying the object.
Late at Night is a one-of-a-kind original etching by Irish artist John Sheehy. Hand-pulled by the artist, this work features impressionist markings on a graphic depiction of a woman on her mobile phone. This piece is an original 1 of 1, signed by the artist.
Artist John Sheehy
Size 36 X 56 (incl. frame)
Medium Etching
Edition 1 of 1
Framing Only available framed in black
Why the work hits
Sheehy paints like someone with a lot to say and not a lot of patience for theory. Even his largest paintings, by his own account, are made in under an hour. The marks aren't agonised. They're chosen and committed to. That speed survives in the etchings — there's a confidence in the line that says someone decided this image was going to exist before the doubt got in.
The subject matter is recognisably his: ordinary moments rendered with the slight wobble of memory. The woman on her phone "Late at Night" could be anyone. She's also already a Sheehy character — flattened, deadpan, present.
If you've ever stood in front of a slick gallery print and thought "this is fine but I don't believe a person made it", Sheehy is the antidote. You can see the hand in everything.
How to enter at the right level
A limited edition linocut print by John J Sheehy. Signed and numbered by the artist.
Artist John Sheehy
Size 30 X 44 cm
Medium linocut
Edition Size 10
Two new etchings at the top of the page are not the only way in. Sheehy's older linocut prints sit between £50 and £60 — small editions of ten, signed and numbered. Cow, Deer, Kettle, Cooking Pot, Mother and Child, Flute, Fiddle. Domestic objects, animals, folk musicians, scenes from rural Ireland. Cheaper than dinner for two in Stoke Newington, and you get to live with them forever.
"Pie 'n' Mash" (£60) is the obvious crowd-pleaser if you want the London-life side of his work. "Mother and Child" (£50) is the quieter pick. "Two Faced" sits in the middle as either an original etching (£150) or a monoprint (£200) — both signed by the artist.
A limited edition linocut print by John J Sheehy with deckled edges. Signed and numbered by the artist.
Artist John Sheehy
Size 25 X 26 cm
Medium linocut
Edition Size 10
A colourful monoprint with etching and intaglio techniques by John Sheehy. Signed and numbered by the artist.
Artist John Sheehy
Size 53 X 53 cm
Medium original
An etching by John Sheehy with two figures and the words “Two Faced” - signed and numbered by the artist.
Artist John Sheehy
Size 54 X 55 cm
Medium original
Year 2019
A note: linocut editions of ten move quickly, and at least one ("Fish 'N' Chips") has already sold out. If something on his page is calling, that's worth knowing.
A limited edition linocut print by John J Sheehy with deckled edges. Signed and numbered by the artist.
Artist John Sheehy
Size 30 X 44 cm
Medium linocut
Edition Size 10
For the etchings: 1 of 1 means 1 of 1. There isn't a second one.
PRODUCT PICKS
Have a wander through John Sheehy's full page on Atom. Whether you're at £50 linocut money or £300 one-of-a-kind etching money, the story is the same: an artist most people have never heard of, in the Arts Council Collection, still making.
A limited edition linocut print by John J Sheehy with deckled edges. Signed and numbered by the artist.
Artist John Sheehy
Size 25 X 26 cm
Medium linocut
Edition Size 10