Artist Francis O’Toole: ‘I spent a long time in St James’s Hospital watching my foot, and lower leg, slowly rot and turn black. I eventually ended up with a below-knee amputation’

Art: What Lies Beneath

‘The Waste Land’, by Francis O’Toole

For Francis O’Toole, the beginning was ordinary enough. “An odd, badly done scribble in a copybook now and then” and “far-from-inspiring art classes” were all he knew, his knowledge of art and artists “nearly non-existent”.

The family lived in Fatima Mansions, Ballymun, Jobstown, Tallaght and eventually settled in Crumlin. Childhood was spent outdoors with friends or on his own, roaming the streets, fields, back lanes, scrap yards.