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Across his career in the 1990s and early 2000s, Roy Keane, the Ireland and Manchester United footballer, was a widely decorated midfielder with a relentless will to win. He also had his share of controversies, which included being famously sent off on several occasions.
These have now been documented in Irish painter Seánie Harte’s Red Card series, which marks the 11 times Keane received his marching orders while playing for Manchester United.
The colour-filled paintings, done in a loose, figurative style, somewhat resemble the work of Elizabeth Peyton – if she’d used Sky Sports’s Premier League Years for inspiration rather than louche bohemians and Britpop luminaries. Although Harte’s oil pastel paintings often depict acts of aggression or their aftermath, their light look, with a hint of the absurd and nostalgia, gives a feel of visual one-liners.
In the years since Keane retired as a player and stepped away from management, he has become better known as a pundit and podcaster, with a no-nonsense approach to analysis and a sharp sense of humour. Some years ago, on the hugely popular Stick to Football podcast that he co-hosts with other former players, he recounted his array of red cards with a typical bluntness and humour.
Harte remembered the matter-of-fact manner in which Keane discussed getting sent off in 1995 for stamping on Crystal Palace’s Gareth Southgate. “Gareth deserved that. Gareth lunged at me,” Keane says on the podcast. “Gareth was nasty. Everyone thinks Gareth is a nice guy. I’ll tell you … he tried to break my leg!”
This was when inspiration struck. “The way he talked about them was quite funny,” Harte says. “They didn’t seem as bad then, looking back, and I thought with my art style I could do something similar, where it can shift the mood from aggressive violence into something more colourful and playful.”
He adds: “I was not planning to do all of them. I ended up doing one or two, and then I got a bit of traction and I thought: Oh I need to do them all now.” Each painting is paired with a one-liner from the footballer himself.
“People annoy me – and he still annoys me,” accompanies a painting of Keane scuffling with Newcastle’s Alan Shearer. “Yeah it was reckless. I enjoyed it. You have to put down a marker,” features the aftermath of a challenge that leaves Gus Poyet of Chelsea writhing in pain during an FA Charity Shield match. “I don’t think that tackle was that bad,” shows him in the middle of a notorious revenge foul on Alf-Inge Haaland.
Harte first posted the images on Instagram and sells prints online. His exhibition, Sent Off: Paintings of Every Roy Keane Red Card opens soon at the Hen’s Teeth space in Dublin. They’ve had a big response since he first put them out last year, though he admits: “I know Roy is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.” Among those to get in touch with praise was one of the directors of Saipan, the film inspired by Keane’s falling out with Ireland manager Mick McCarthy ahead of the 2002 World Cup.
Harte, 36, lives in Dublin where he trained as a graphic designer. He only returned to painting two years ago for some distraction. “I’m looking at screens the whole time and in quite a niche area as well, where I’m designing billing systems,” he says. “It’s not the most creative stuff. So I really felt like I needed something a bit more tactile and creative. When I started doing it I decided I’m just going to paint things that I want to do. Things that I enjoy. And football was one.”
Being a lifelong Manchester United fan, and Ireland supporter, has provided fodder for his paintings. Keane was an obvious touchstone. Harte also paints other things that amuse him – he’s made a run of paintings based on scenes from Father Ted.
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Though he has painted some recent football events, such as an Irish fan taunting Cristiano Ronaldo after he was sent off in a World Cup qualifier last November, and Troy Parrott’s dramatic winner for Ireland against Hungary, he usually prefers to look further into the past. “Thinking back to when I was younger and those memories around football,” he says.
To create the paintings, Harte uses grainy TV footage and old photos of an incident as a guide for sketching. He has painted some images of Ireland’s past World Cup exploits and David Beckham’s infamous red card at the 1998 tournament in France. There’s also a rendering of Eric Cantona’s 1995 lunge at a Crystal Palace fan. Also, given Keane’s considerable achievements as a player, Harte plans to expand his oeuvre in depicting the more positive aspects of his game.
As for the red cards: Harte doesn’t know if Keane has ever seen the paintings. Recently, though, his girlfriend met a former teammate of Keane and showed him the images. Harte relays that the teammate said “He [Keane] would probably love them but say he doesn’t.” Keane’s representatives were contacted for comment on the art but no reply has been forthcoming.
“It would be a real dream for Roy to harshly critique my artwork,” Harte concludes. “That would easily be the funniest outcome.”
Sent Off: Paintings of Every Roy Keane Red Card is at Hen’s Teeth, Dublin on 3 September.
