Artist Biographies

Sandra Landers
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Sandra Landers

Sandra Landers is a book artist and writer living in the West Kerry Gaeltacht. While pursuing her book art she has also produced, edited, and indexed books. She has travelled through most of North America, Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands and Europe. Her lifelong fascination with books as containers and the words they hold continues.

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Clare Langan
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Clare Langan

Clare Langan studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and with a Fulbright Scholarship, completed a film workshop at NYU. She has represented Ireland in numerous international Biennales, including the 25th Bienal de São Paulo, 2002 Brazil; The Liverpool Biennial - International 2002, Tate Liverpool; Singapore Biennial 2008, Dojima River Biennale 2009, Osaka Japan; Busan Biennale 2010, South Korea. Her films and photographs are in a number of international public and private collections including The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Arts Council of Ireland, The Office of Public Works, the Tony Podesta Private Collection, Washington, and the Hugo and Carla Brown Collection, UK.

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Sarah Lewtas
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Sarah Lewtas

Sarah Lewtas lives and works in Dunlewey in county Donegal where she has lived for the past 40 years. Originally from Sussex where she studied fine art at Eastbourne College of Art and Design she then moved to London where she studied for her B.A. in painting at St Martins. Over the last three decades she has focused on sculptural installation while continuing with an ongoing drawing practice and recently botanical painting. She has been involved in numerous international exhibitions and symposia.She is presently working with cardboard as a material for making sculptural forms and will be presenting a special installation at the R.C.C. Letterkenny for the St Columkille centenary exhibition this summer.

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Kevin McGee
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Kevin McGee

Kevin is from Gortahork, Gay Town, Donegal. He has a background in agriculture, blacksmith and silversmith, stonemason, painting and decorating houses, music agus storytelling. He has been painting, sculpting and a mixed material artist for the last 30 years. He studied art in Galway and returned home to Donegal in the nineties. His time is spent between family, art, art exhibitions, farming, gardening, and enjoying life.

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Cathal Mac Fhionnghaile
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Cathal Mac Fhionnghaile

Cathal McGinley is ‘of’ Inis Bó Finne; he was born on the island but was raised in Magheroarty overlooking his family’s home place. Cathal obtained his degree in Sligo and later his MAFA in University of Ulster.

Throughout this formal education Cathal  maintained a ‘grá’ for his home place and its people, customs and heritage. His methodology combines heritage, folklore, dinnseanchas and a love of his language and island community. Cathal’s work is attuned to ‘dúchas’ – it is both instinct and heritage and at the same time utterly contemporary; simultaneously ancient and modern.

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Deirdre McKenna
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Deirdre McKenna

Deirdre attended the College of Art and Design, Crawford in Cork. She studied fine art painting and has been a practicing professional of the craft since. In 2011, she began to learn printing techniques under the mentorship of Niall Naessens. She is a member of Cork Printmakers for several years, and works in Corca Dhuibhne and Cork city. Her art work has been chosen for printing exhibitions worldwide including; Center for Printmaking Connecticut, Impact 10 Encuentre i Santander '18, The Manly Art Gallery and Museum, NSW Australia, The New State at Graphic Studio Gallery.

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Tadhg McSweeney (R.I.P)
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Tadhg McSweeney (R.I.P)

Tadhg McSweeney was a self-taught artist. He studied in the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, between 1959 and 1960, and later studied printmaking techniques, such as etching and silkscreen printing in London. He exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy, the Oireachtas, Group 65 and the Independent Artists annual exhibitions, and had fourteen solo shows in Cork, Dublin, San Francisco, Hamburg, Killarney and London. He passed away on 29 August 2018, aged 82.

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Niall Naessens
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Niall Naessens

Niall is a draughtsman specialising in etching. His work explores many ideas within the genre of landscape art. He makes pictures that are familiar yet not real, a magic realism. He is trying to portray the life of an artist and his ideas through the vehicle of landscape. He wants the viewers to look, think and wonder as he does.

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Heidi Nguyen
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Heidi Nguyen

Heidi Nguyen is a French contemporary painter based in County Donegal, Ireland. She trained at Ateliers Penninghen, Paris and then worked as a graphic designer and illustrator for ten years. She has worked as a painter and a printmaker since 2000. Her inspiration comes from a sensory process, the feel of water, the pulse of the wind or more recently the sounds of the birds surrounding her studio. In June she will be releasing a new body of work; a visual diary named “Imaginary windows”, snapshots from a train window and response to the first confinement in Ireland, and “Birds song” a visual soundscape exploring emotion.

Studio in County Donegal, Ireland
Tel: 00353872799635
www.heidinguyen.com
https://www.instagram.com/heidinguyen6978/

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Úna Quigley
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Úna Quigley

Born in Dublin, Úna Quigley graduated from Crawford College of Art Cork and Winchester School of Art, Spain and U.K. in 2001 with an MA in European Fine Art. Quigley works in film art, her practice incorporating writing, drawing and performance. Her work explores questions of feminism and ecocriticism. She has since exhibited widely such as at the Kassel Film Festival, the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Glucksman Gallery Ireland, and Crawford Gallery Ireland. Quigley works in film art, her practice incorporating writing, drawing and performance. She lives and works in Connemara with her composer collaborator partner and their two children.

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Katrina Quille
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Katrina Quille

Born in Birmingham in 1955, Katrina attended art college in Liverpool. Having lived in London for several years, she moved to Donegal and has been living there ever since. She likes the peace and quiet of her surroundings. Her painting has been intermittent in this time. She practices daydreaming, and attempts to write stories.

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Donnacha Quilty
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Donnacha Quilty

Donnacha Quilty was born in Galway in 1975. He has qualifications in Art and Design, Art and Design Teaching and, most recently, Contemporary Art from various third level institutions. Donnacha’s work is rooted in an appreciation of the coastal landscape and the constantly changing compositions and qualities of light that occur there. Donnacha now lives on the Wild Atlantic Way in Furbo, County Galway.

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Bob Quinn
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Bob Quinn

Bob Quinn has been variously a writer, film maker, photographer, forester, and wood sculptor for the past fifty years. Born in Dublin, he began as a producer-director in RTÉ and has lived in the Gaeltacht of Connemara, Co. Galway since 1970. He is a member of Aosdána, the Irish parliament of artists, and this November will be awarded an honorary doctorate by NUIG.

His drama and documentary films include ‘The Atlantean Quartet’; ‘Poitín’; ‘Budawanny’, ‘Cloch’; ‘Graceville’, ‘Bog Graffiti’. His books include ‘Smokey Hollow, ‘An Tír Aneol' (photography); ‘Maverick - a dissident view of broadcasting’; ‘The Atlantean Irish’ and ‘The Accompanist’ (a novel). Work in progress is a memoir about his meetings with Muammar Ghadaffi.

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Pádraic Reaney
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Pádraic Reaney

Pádraic Reaney was born in Carraroe, Co. Galway in 1952. He studied Fine Art at Galway, Regional Technical College and has been a full-time artist since leaving college. He built a studio in Moycullen, where he now lives and works. He has exhibited extensively in Ireland, Europe, Canada, USA, Brazil, Japan, South Africa and Australia. His work is held in collections such as the Modern Irish Art Collection; Dublin Writers Museum, Ireland; Irish Embassy, London; Urawa Wood-Cut Prints Association, Japan.

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Alannah Robins
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Alannah Robins

Alannah Robins lives in North West Connemara. She has an interdisciplinary artistic practice based between Ireland and Sweden where she regularly participates in and curates both solo and collaborative projects. A graduate of the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Robins has won several commissions and awards for her artwork, including a public commission for the Waterford Institute of Technology, and bursaries from the Irish Arts Council and Galway County Council. Themes of displacement and migration are constantly recurring in her work, as is man’s relationship to nature. She is the founder and director of Interface, a studio and residency program on the West coast of Ireland.

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Patsy Dan Rodgers (R.I.P)
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Patsy Dan Rodgers (R.I.P)

Patsy Dan Rodgers was born in 1944 on Westland Row, Dublin. Rodgers was a painter, musician, and the King of Tory from the 1990s until his death in 2018. His family adopted him and took him to Tory when he was about four years of age. His paintings have been exhibited worldwide. As a youth Derek Hill had personally inspired him to paint during Hill's visits to Tory, and he was also devoted to music and his native language.The musical instrument with which he was most associated was the button accordion.

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Ruairí Rodgers
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Ruairí Rodgers

Ruairí Rodgers is from Tory Island.
He has created a unique and fascinating record of their small community and Tory Island life for over fifty years.

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Úna Ní Shé
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Úna Ní Shé

Úna was brought up in the suburbs of Cork city and had very happy holidays in Corca Dhuibhne. She has been living in the west Kerry Gaeltacht since 1990. Drawing is central to her craft as an artist. It connects her most strongly with her core being and the interconnection with all living things.

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Maria Simonds-Gooding
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Maria Simonds-Gooding

Maria Simonds-Gooding has been identified as one of Ireland's foremost painters and printmakers to have emerged since the Sixties.

Born in India in 1939, Maria Simonds-Gooding studied at the National College of Art, Dublin, Le Centre de Peinture, Bruxelles, Bath Academy of Art, Corsham, UK from 1962 – 1968 and has lived and worked in Kerry since 1947. She was elected a member of Aosdána in 1981 and was elected full membership of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2012.

Her work, which has been exhibited internationally, is represented in many public and private collections, including those of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

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