Sean McSweeney (1935 - 2018)
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Sean McSweeney "Evening Bogland" Oil on board, 15" x 22"
"I love the shoreline and want my next exhibition to be based on sea fields and shorelines".
Sean McSweeney
Sean McSweeney
Sean McSweeney, born in 1935, is considered to be one of Ireland's leading contemporary landscape painters. His interest in art was first inspired by childhood visits to the Hugh Lane Gallery in central Dublin, not far from where he was brought up. He studied art part-time taking evening classes at the National College of Art & Design and his first solo exhibition took place in 1958 at the Cavendish Gallery, opposite the Gate Theatre. When he first exhibited at the annual Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1962, his work was noticed by the artist Cecil King, who recommended him to Leo Smith, director of the Dawson Gallery, at that time Ireland's leading commercial art gallery. It was through his relationship with the Dawson Gallery that Sean McSweeney established his reputation as an artist in Ireland. In 1967 he moved from Dublin to Co. Wicklow, and following a sell-out exhibition at the Dawson Gallery he was finally able to give up his job as a clerical worker, and devote himself to painting full time.
In the 1980's he moved to the west of Ireland, settling in "Yeats Country" near Lissadell in Co. Sligo. Here, the bog and shoreline immediately outside his studio, became a constant motif and source of inspiration for his painting. His paintings, never romanticize the landscape, but show it in all of it's many and varying colours, moods, and fecund beauty. He portrays the landscape as seen by someone who is not just a neutral observer of a scene, but from the viewpoint of someone who actually lives in and understands the environment that they inhabit, and his semi abstract paintings perfectly capture the atmospheric beauty and energy of the Irish landscape.
Retrospective exhibitions of Sean McSweeney's work were held in 1990 at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin and at the Galway Arts Festival, and in 2007 at the Model Arts Gallery in Sligo, the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork and the Solstice Arts Centre in Navan. Sean McSweeney's paintings now feature in many public collections of art in Ireland, such as those of Trinity College, Dublin, the Ulster Museum, Dublin City University, the Dublin City Gallery: The Hugh Lane and the Sligo Museum & Art Gallery.
In the 1980's he moved to the west of Ireland, settling in "Yeats Country" near Lissadell in Co. Sligo. Here, the bog and shoreline immediately outside his studio, became a constant motif and source of inspiration for his painting. His paintings, never romanticize the landscape, but show it in all of it's many and varying colours, moods, and fecund beauty. He portrays the landscape as seen by someone who is not just a neutral observer of a scene, but from the viewpoint of someone who actually lives in and understands the environment that they inhabit, and his semi abstract paintings perfectly capture the atmospheric beauty and energy of the Irish landscape.
Retrospective exhibitions of Sean McSweeney's work were held in 1990 at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin and at the Galway Arts Festival, and in 2007 at the Model Arts Gallery in Sligo, the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork and the Solstice Arts Centre in Navan. Sean McSweeney's paintings now feature in many public collections of art in Ireland, such as those of Trinity College, Dublin, the Ulster Museum, Dublin City University, the Dublin City Gallery: The Hugh Lane and the Sligo Museum & Art Gallery.