Samuel Walsh
Samuel Walsh was born in London, England to Irish parents in 1951; his mother from Limerick and his father from Ennis, Co. Clare. He was educated in London and Limerick. He lived in Limerick from 1968 to 1990 and he now lives and works in Co. Clare.
After moving from London, he was educated at Villiers Secondary School, where he sat the Irish Leaving Certificate. He has stated that he struggled academically and did not receive good marks. (He was inducted into the Villiers School Roll of Honour in 2012). After finishing secondary school, he studied at the Limerick School of Art and Design, Mary Immaculate College of Education, Limerick and the National College of Art & Design, Dublin.
He is closely associated with the beginnings of the Limerick Exhibition of Visual Art (EVA/EV+A/eva international). In 1987 he founded the National Collection of Contemporary Drawing that hangs in the Limerick City Gallery of Art.
His first one-person show was in Limerick in 1978 and since then he has held one-person shows in Cork, Carlow, Ennis, and Dublin with the Oliver Dowling Gallery, the Rubicon Gallery and Hillsboro Fine Art, and one-person shows in Switzerland and France. His style has moved from an early interest in Minimalism to a combination of Post-minimalism and Lyrical Abstraction. Since 2007 he has attempted to make paintings that combine elements of the two disciplines of drawing and painting in that each hold equal value within the composition.
He has dealt with a variety of subject matter using an abstract visual language in his career: the Stations of The Cross ('Fourteen Points of Entry', 1991, now in the collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin), the encroachment of and into an individual's personal space ('Ambit' paintings, 2001-2002), his father's wartime experiences ('Airborne Drawings' 2002), interpretations of ancient classical art motifs ('Frieze' paintings and drawings 2006-2007). In November 2007 a major body of work by the artist based on 'The Divine Comedy' by Dante Alighieri opened at the Limerick City Gallery of Art. The "Inferno" section travelled to CIAC, Pont-Aven, Brittany, France in May 2008 and was shown in its entirety again at Triskel@ESB: Caroline St., Cork in January 2010. He showed new paintings at VISUAL, Carlow in September 2011 entitled: 'The Coercion of Substance' that subsequently travelled to the Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Co Louth and the Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co Donegal.
In 1997 he was elected a member of Aosdána, a body set up by the Irish Government through the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon to recognise outstanding contributions by individuals to the creative arts in Ireland. He is a Fellow of the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ballycastle, Co. Mayo.
He has been selected for international artist residencies in Switzerland in 1990, France in 1995 & 2002, the USA in 2009 and in Berlin, Germany in 2012.[citation needed]
His work is in collections in Ireland including the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Crawford Gallery, Cork; the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon, University College Dublin, University of Limerick, Trinity College, Dublin; Office of Public Works, Dublin; National Self-Portrait Collection, Limerick; University College, Cork; Leinster House, Dublin; County Collection, Ennis, Co. Clare; Dublin Dental School & Hospital, and in international collections in France, Croatia, Hungary, England, & Switzerland. [1]
He taught drawing at the Limerick School of Art and Design from 1987 to 1997. In 2005 he was the Professor of Drawing for the Autumn semester at the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art, Brittany, France. He has also been a visiting lecturer to this college and to the National College of Art & Design, Dublin and the Burren College of Art, Co. Clare. He lectured annually on the Drawing Studies course at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin 2008-2010.
The artist is represented in Ireland by The Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin. (www.oliversearsgallery.com).