Padraig MacMiadhachain

Padraig MacMiadhachain (pronounced mac-mee-a-hon) was born in Ireland in l929 and lived for over 40 years on the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset. He studied first at the Belfast College of Art and later at the National College of Art in Dublin. He was a contributor to the Irish Exhibitions of Living Art in the 1960s, alongside artists Gerald Dillion, Camille Souter, Louis Le Brocquy, amongst others. William Scott had a profound influence on his later work. He painted widely in Ireland, Cuba, Mexico, South America, Morocco, the USA, Western and Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. One man exhibitions of his work have been held in London, Madrid (sponsored by the Spanish Government), Dublin, Belfast (sponsored by the Arts Council), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Krakow, Los Angeles, Seattle and Vancouver. He was awarded a travelling scholarship to both Moscow (1957) and Poland (1960), one by the British Council and the other by the Russian Government. To celebrate his 70th birthday in l999 he had a retrospective exhibition at The Molesworth Gallery in Dublin, Ireland. In 2000 his works were selected by Mary Fedden to be shown in "Fedden's Choice", at Lena Boyle Fine Art. Prizes include the Laing National Painting Competition, the Daler-Rowney Award and the Laing Regional Painting Competition, Winchester. Padraig’s work is held in many private collections, among them those of HM Carlos King of Spain, Lord Briggs, Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, Ronald Alley, the late Peter Sellers, Bob Monkhouse, The Arts Council (Ireland), NBC, Caja Insular de Ahorres de Gran Canaria, Escuela de Bellas Artes (Las Palmas), Hereford College Oxford, Sussex University, The Bank of China.

I love painting, and I have managed to live by it. I make some good paintings and loads of rubbish too (hopefully you won't ever see the latter). I seem to have two moods in working; my usual love of pale greys and warm blacks that are all around me in Dorset and Cornwall, my lifelong fascination with fishing harbours and all their, to me, lovely smells (which I cannot paint) and the colour and buzz of Buenos Aires and their ice cream and its fantastic colours. These bright colours have carried over into my paintings made in St. Ives and elsewhere.