Art
My career in fine art spans thirty years, and I have been practising and teaching classical drawing and realist painting for the last ten years.
Education
Although music took centre-stage in my education and career in my 20s, it was actually through my music studies that I really began to learn about the history of art and composition. Music and art evolved in parallel and the cross-fertilisation between the two has always proved important. Indeed, many famous composers (and musicians) were also serious artists in their early careers, and vice versa. So I drew and painted throughout my college years.
In 2012, I began studying classical drawing, initially for one year at The Drawing Studio, Dublin. I felt at the time, and I believe even more acutely today, that sound draughtsmanship must come first before turning one’s attention to painting.
In 2017, I felt ready to begin formally studying realist painting, and I enrolled to the Angel Academy of Art in Florence, Italy. Since then, I have taken courses online and in studio at many classical realist painting academies and with individual artists including Vitruvian Studio (USA) and Florence Academy of Art (Italy).
This kind of education in classical realist drawing and painting is just not available in mainstream third-level art colleges here in Ireland, so it was necessary for me to look elsewhere, at specialised international fine art academies, to learn these traditional painting and drawing techniques and practices.