Pg. 15 — Featured Artist | Ronan Cahill
Ronan Cahill
Ronan lives and paints in Scotland.
Exile, erosion of Identity, imagined worlds, and particle physics are central themes. What is life? Universes of particles scattered all around. His work represents both landscape painting spaces, and abstract painting and digital spaces he can own, spaces in which he can ask great questions of himself, and hide. Lost worlds collide, are destroyed and created, in various stages between development and falling apart, mirroring the trials, and victories in life.
Ronan is a self-taught artist and has worked as an engineer for 20 years.
He’s both an engineer and an artist, in fact 3 different artists. A love of painting nature and landscapes to try and capture the beautiful force in front of our eyes. Another artist within him loves to show up at the page/canvas and paint from within via line, colour and form to create abstract works in watercolour and acrylic. The third artist within him likes to take all the artworks of the first two artists and remix and layer them into digital works. Photographs of his paintings are used to create new media art. His initial art is cannibalised and taken on a subconscious walk through digital technology at night when he’s too tired for rational thought. Paintings are cut, pasted, and manipulated, into new media, and eventually come out unrecognisable. Layer is added to layer until a finished piece appears. Gilcee prints are printed, only one of each on quality photo-rag or German Etching paper.
Themes aren’t always understood by Ronan. He just shows up and the subconscious takes charge. As artists our only necessity is to show-up at the tablet, page or canvas. Some creative “force” then takes charge.
Ronan has drawn and painted all his life. Without art he is nothing.
2016 Solo Exhibition at the British Embassy in Luanda, Angola of his Luanda watercolours.
2018 Group Exhibition at Melrose Gallery
2019 Group Exhibition for MacMillan Cancer in Edinburgh
1997 UCD Bachelor Mechanical Engineering
He won first prize in the annual Visual Arts Society exhibition in 1997 at UCD
2020 August a selection of his Scottish landscape watercolour paintings appeared at the Tualach Restaurant at the Blair Atholl Golf Club in Perthshire, Scotland.
2020 Online group exhibition at the Hubcap Gallery, Edinburgh.
2021 Online group exhibition at the Line Gallery, Linlithgow
Recent courses attended include Alvaro Castagnet, Aine Divine, and Alfons Bytautas.
Ronan is a member of Visual Arts Scotland.