Louis Le Brocquy (1916-2012)
Louis Le Brocquy was one of Ireland’s best known painters of the twentieth century. He is widely acclaimed for his “Portrait Heads” of Literary figures and fellow artists. He is the only person to be included, in his lifetime, in the National Gallery of Ireland. He is also represented in London and the Tate Gallery in New York.
Kenneth Webb (b1927)
Born in London in 1927, he initially served in the Royal Navy and Fleet Air Arm until they were disbanded in 1948. He then studied in College of Art Gloucester and Cheltenham from 1948 – 1952. He was appointed head of painting in the Ulster College of Art in Belfast a position he held from 1953 – 1960.
In 1957 he founded the Irish School of Landscape painting. In 1974 Webb purchased the Ballinaboy Studio in Connemara on the west coast of Ireland, and this has offered a multitude of inspiration for his work over the last forty years.
Graham Knuttel (b1954)
Graham Knuttel was born in Dublin in 1954. Initially renowned for his large wooden mechanical animated sculptures, Knuttel’s figurative paintings are now acclaimed internationally. He paints into an urban landscape to which he himself belongs, favouring dark and dangerous scenes, which reflect the fears, doubts and hopes he feels himself. It is on canvas that Knuttel fights his battles, the tensions and moods brilliantly portrayed on the faces of his subjects, his wicked sense of humour evident throughout. Knuttel returns constantly to still life in his work, inspired by its potential for simplicity and bringing him back to his early studies of Cezanne and Picasso. Knuttel’s work is held in public and private collections worldwide. Collectors include Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Bertie Ahern and Joanna Lumley as well as Swiss Bank Corporation, Allied Irish Banks, Goldman Sachs International and Saatchi & Saatchi London. Graham’s bold use of colour and form and the narrative tensions which wind their way through all his work, make him a true story teller. Knuttel’s works are instantly recognisable, making him one of Ireland’s most popular and collectable living artists of our time.
John Behan RHA (b1938)
John Behan is renowned for his many themed works, his great bulls, birds and famine ships. He first created The Famine Ship to stand at the base of Croagh Patrick, Co Mayo. To Commemorate the contribution of Irish emigrants worldwide, the Irish Government commissioned a 26 x 24 foot bronze themed piece on The Famine Ship entitled “Arrival” which now stands in the plaza in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York
Charlotte was born in Galway in 1960. Originally a nurse, charlotte Kelly studied fine art in 2002 to 2005. She became a full time artist in 2006. Kelly works mainly in oils and would describe her work as being abstract landscape and figurative. Drawing is very important to her. Charcoal, ink and pastels are the mediums which she enjoys using when drawing. Collections: Bank of Ireland., Hibernian Insurance, Parknasilla Hotel, Kerry..Commissions: Office of Public Works. Prince of Wales Hotel, Athlone.
Born in Belfast in 1943 and trained at the College of Art in Belfast and Liverpool, Brian Ballard balances his time in Belfast with that at his retreat on the Donegal island of Inishfree.
Ballard’s contemporary approach to painting alternates between figurative treatment of nudes, landscape and expressionistic still life, all of which he practices in equal measure and intensity. His work can be found in many collections including The Arts Council of Ireland, A.I.B., Crawford Municipal Gallery Cork, The Ulster Museum, The National Trust, Waterford Wedgewood PLC and Irish Rock Legends U2.
Born in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland in 1965, He studied art until He left school at 16 to begin his working life. After a variety of positions he went back to part time education to retrain for a career in other fields.
Never one to remain still for long, He began to reinvent myself. He decided that he wanted more challenges in life and started channelling his energies in other areas. He returned to education to study art and psychology. Then decided to shift his interests towards sociology instead of art.
He turned back to art about 25 years ago and has never looked back. Originally working in watercolours, then progressing to acrylics for more flexibility to mould with his imagination. Nowadays he also creates sculptures in wood and metal.
His passions for travel and art have been constant companions for many years. His art fuses elements of Americana and European surrealism with aspects of Irish figuratism and the viewer may readily discern the influences of Hopper, Dali, De Chirico, Magritte and Markey in my work.
He lives in southern Spain and his ‘Mediterranean’ palette brings warmth to the quiet places. There tend to be few figures in his paintings as he prefers to offer uncluttered landscapes into which the viewer may place themselves
Visual artist printmaker.
She uses lino and wood to create her prints. The Connemara countryside where she lives, and her farming background, provide her with inspiration for her prints. Animals feature in many of her works. Her models are cows, calves, sheep, lambs from her family’s and the neighbouring farms. She also make prints of dogs and cats, and find that they all have their own personalities and traits.
When planning a print she takes loads of photographs of the animals. From these images, she makes a number of sketches until she is happy with the final result.
Ronnie Graham
Ronnie Graham started carving in Belfast in 1980 originally as some light relief from the tensions of the time. An early introduction to bog wood quickly turned to an obsession and he has experimented with the material ever since. He now lives in Kinvara and has exhibited regularly in Ireland, Northern Europe and USA since his first solo show in Kenny’s (Galway) in 1991.
Malcolm Bennett (b1942)
Malcolm Bennett was born in 1942 and has been active in the Irish art scene for over forty years. Indeed his first shows with the Caldwell were when the gallery was barely four years old itself.
His style is strongly rooted in the Irish school of abstract landscape painting, the rich surfaces of his paintings displaying a remarkable insight into both his subject matter and understanding of the medium he uses. His work, while echoing places at home or abroad maintains an ethereal quality that takes the viewer on yet another journey, into an artist’s unique interpretation of place. Every image evokes a sense of the mystical and draws the viewer into his world. The rich surfaces display a remarkable insight to both subject and medium.
Bennett is a widely travelled painter, he has visited Europe, Australia, Asia and America in search of new imagery, but always returns to Ireland to view the landscape with a fresh eye.
Malcolm Bennett has been a regular contributor to major exhibitions in Ireland since the early 1960’s. These include Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Oireachtas, the RHA, Ulster Painting and the RUA. He has also exhibited since 1966 in Belfast, Dublin, London and abroad
Lucy Butler
Lucy graduated from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire in 2010 with a degree in Model Making for Film and Media. After 5 years working in the field she returned to her roots in Co. Mayo and began to explore some of the techniques I had learnt while working as a model maker.
John Morris (b1958)
John Morris was born in Dublin in 1958. He has been painting since the late 1990’s and is primarily self-taught. Morris’s paintings of streetscapes and landscapes are described with raw and vibrant strokes of paint giving his work great vitality and freshness. He demonstrates the ability to capture a glimpse of passing time and light. It is this observation of a moment and relaying it to canvas that John finds both exciting and challenging.
Joan Hogan
Joan Hogan, a Fine Arts graduate of GMIT, is one of Galway’s major artists whose paintings hang mainly in Ireland but also in places as far afield as New Zealand, Australia and the USA. Drawing her inspiration from the River Corrib, the sea and her environs, she explores the energy that surrounds us by creating semi-abstract landscapes through the media of oils and acrylic. Her paintings are intensely physical with a vibrant energy in the material. The viewer is challenged not only to look at the painting but to step beyond the mere image into a world which appears to hang between the intervals of time and space.
Denise Hogan
Denise Hogan is a graduate of GMIT in print and paint, specialising in monoprints, aquatints and paintings. She has exhibited extensively and has works in many private and corporate collections both national and international.. Denise is a full-time artist and teacher of art since her graduation in 1998.
With numerous successful exhibitions under her belt, Louise Conroy is a seasonal professional artist. She focuses mainly on landscapes and enjoys depicting the sensual colours in nature, aiming to portray the solitude and rugged beauty of living in the West of Ireland.
Louise is from Cong, Co Mayo and now is residing in Castlebar
Markey Robinson (1918-1999)
Belfast artist Markey Robinson studied briefly at the Belfast School of Art, but mainly learned from his grandfather who was a painter and decorator. He worked in various other professions including as an electrical welder and a lightweight boxer.
His paintings returned to the same themes of people in landscapes or still life, painted with flat muted colour and dark outlines in almost abstract compositions. He exhibited widely at venues including the Ulster Academy of Arts, Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, at The Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Oriel Gallery and Magee Gallery. His paintings can be found in the collection of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Ulster Museum, Queens University and the VHI.
Norman Teeling was born on Dublin in 1944. He studies for a degree in Art and teaching from the National College of Art and Design. After teaching for 10 years, he worked as a background artist in animation films such as teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
He has 10 paintings depicting the Easter rising on permanent display in the GPO in Dublin.
Robert Devereux (b1972)
Robert was born in Dublin but moved to Cong when he was 4 years old.
He studied Hotel Management in Shannon school of Hotel management, studying in Switzerland and in London.
He was always interested in the creative side of food and carried on to self teach himself art.
He has been creating and selling his art since 2008
Decan O’Connor (b1957)
Declan O’Connor is a native Co.Tipperary. After qualifying as a pharmacist he began practicing art in his spare time. In the early nineties O’Connor worked in earnest on a series of portraits, first the Irish Writers, the Seven Signatories of 1916 and also C.J. Haughey. Declan O’Connor painted under the pseudonym of Roderic O’Connor during this period in order to eliminate the confusion with his day job.
In the meantime he has given up his day job to work solely as an artist painting fulltime under his own name, Declan O’Connor. His work has turned to landscape and horses, especially horse fairs, and his style has since become more confident, looser and fluid in the style of Yeats.
Michael McCarthy (b.1940)
Born in Mallow, Co. Cork, Michael studied at Newark Art College before emigrating to Australia in 1966. Here he met the renowned Australian landscape artist, Leonard Long who was a major influence on his work. Painting outdoors everyday, observing nature and the Australian light was a wonderful apprenticeship. Having established himself as an artist with 3 one man shows in Sydney, he later was invited to be artist in residence with the US Forest Service in 1992, and spent a year in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California painting major scenes in the National Park. In 2000, Michael was invited to participate in the Belfast and Dublin Millennium exhibition along with Norman J. McCaig and wildlife artist David Shepherd.
Michael returned to Ireland and lived in Cong for some time and now lives in Cork with his Australian wife Helen. During his long career he has exhibited in more than 40 exhibitions. His work is displayed in Government House, Sydney, Allied Irish Merchant Bank, The University California and in many other corporate & private collections worldwide.
Marie Carroll (d. 2016)
Marie Carroll was born in London but moved to Ireland in the 1970’s and that’s where the inspiration for her art comes from and is created. Marie studied at the Goldsmith College of Art where she developed the particular skills that is evident in her work such as the use of colour and control of light.
Her influences are routed in early impressionism and postmodernism and this is evident in much of her art. Well-travelled, Marie spent time living in Paris and then Switzerland honing her skills before returning to London where she began to exhibit and sell her work before eventually settling in Ireland.
Once in Ireland Marie drew inspiration from the city scenes of Dublin as well as the rural areas which surrounded it and County Wicklow. Often painting en plein air, Marie is able to capture the spontaneity city life in a way that other artists cannot.
In later years and to this day her paintings have focused more on land and seascapes, still drawing inspiration from Ireland.
John studied Engineering in college, it was Art that filled his heart. After a technical and business career of 30 years, the ‘pull’ of Art was too great and he became a fulltime painter 20 years ago.
It’s a decision he has never regretted, he’s worked hard to be a better painter, and through his teaching he has found a deeper understanding of what makes good Art.
He wanted to learn how to paint all genres – from landscape to still life, from portraits to figurative painting.He realised how much he enjoyed teaching others what he’d learned over many decades.His work life now is a lovely mixture of painting for galleries, commissions, teaching workshops and personal mentoring, with the prospect of online tuition in the pipeline.
Arthur K Maderson (b1942)
Arthur Maderson is a contemporary artist who was born in London, 1942 and takes influence from French Impressionists such as Monet. He attended the Camberwell School of Art where he won the prestigious Anna Berry Award. It wasn’t until the age of 40 that he felt confident enough to share his work, but from 1983 on wards he began exhibiting widely throughout the UK, Ireland, Europe and US.
He has been presented with various awards, including the Royal West of England Academy Cornelissen Award for ‘Most Distinguished Painting’ (1987) and the Royal Hibernian Academy Abbey Studio Award for ‘Most Distinguished Picture’ (1993).
Along with painting, Maderson worked as an art therapist at Park Prewett Psychiatry Hospital in Hampshire.
Bridget Ryan was born and raised in the Connemara village of Cornamona located on the northern shores of Lough Corrib and now live in Galway city. She attended Galway Mayo Institute of Technology and graduated with a B.A (HONS) degree in Fine Art in 2004. She has been working at my art since.
