Ger Sweeny was born in Castlebar, Co. Mayo in 1959. He studied painting and print at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT), graduating in 1982, and in 1983 obtained his Bachelor of Arts, with honours, from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. He later became Lecturer in Fine Arts, Painting and Print at GMIT (1983-1985) and served as Artist Director at Artspace Studios, Galway (1989-1996).
Artistically, Sweeny is celebrated for his unique approach to abstraction, which manages to be structurally coherent despite a lack of formal reference points. This harmony is achieved through a masterful use of colour, inspired in its implementation by landscape and nature at large. Additionally, there is a meta-narrative that traverses Sweeney’s work as he is acutely aware of his influences. As the artist phrases it himself, his work in an ‘ongoing dialogue’ with abstraction.
In its inception it combined ‘the primary principles of abstract, colourfield, and expressionist painting as they have been practised throughout the last century’, informed by the formal lessons of landscape and, moreover, the memories of places and cultures that left the mark on the painter. More recently, Sweeney experienced a renewed interest in the expressive potential of drawing, gestural line and automatic writing, with the landscapes of west Ireland serving as a primary source of creative drive. The result is engagement ‘with both the history and the contemporary in painting, timeless yet of its time, expressive, contemplative and lyrical’, as the artist himself puts it.
Solo exhibitions: Still Point, Green Fuse Gallery, Co. Mayo (2018); Inscapes, Hamilton Gallery, Sligo (2015); Excavations, Norman Villa Gallery, Galway (2013); Synthesis, Ballina Arts Centre, Co. Mayo (2013); Synthesis, Clifden Arts Festival, Co. Galway (2013); New Works, Waterfront Gallery, Westport, Co. Mayo (2012); Elements, Clifden Arts Festival, Co. Galway (2011); Frieze, Greyfriars Municipal Gallery, Waterford (2010); Frieze, Custom House Gallery, Westport, Co. Mayo (2010).
Group exhibitions: Westport Arts Festival, Co. Mayo (2018); Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition, Dublin (2017); Hermione Annual Exhibition, Alexandra College, Dublin (2017-2016); Tribute to W.B. Yeats, Hamilton Gallery, Sligo (2016); Tromso University, Norway; Open Ground, Clifden Arts Festival, Galway (2015); Éigse Retrospective, Carlow (2010); Northern Light Western Light, Gallery Dix, Helsinki, Finland; Irish Art, Irish Arts Club, London (2009).
Sweeney lives and works in Westport, Co. Mayo, Ireland.
