Shay Culligan - Painter in oil
Boston based painter, originally from Ireland. Specializing in portraiture in oil.
Originally from Ireland, I started making art at a very young age, perhaps because my father was an art teacher and an equine painter. My earliest memories are as a 2-year old laying on our carpeted living room floor in Dublin and sketching side views of my father's Volks Wagon Beetle. The mold had been cast and my childhood was dominated by constant drawing. I attended the National College of Art & Design in Dublin where I studied art education and drawing. Art ed was short lived for me because I soon realized that I did not have a calling to teach, and I also clashed with my professors about the contrived reputations of brilliance attributed to certain sacred cows from art history, while even today I am plagued with similar opinions as subjectivity and revisionism remain absent from the art debate. I continued to study drawing and painting, leaning towards a classical figurative style for many years while I was developing my technical skills.
After relocating to Boston in 1993 I enrolled at Massachusetts College of Art, studying drawing and painting. But their abstraction-focused painting faculty, with one exception, showed scant regard for my technical ability, treating my hard-earned representational skills as an impediment, so I hastily transferred from fine art into graphic design where I completed my BFA. But I kept painting because it is the practice that ultimately defines my life. I have also dabbled in other media including serigraphy, stenciled spray painting, and photography, but oil painting continues to dominate my output.
My relationship with the art establishment remains combative, at best, as I am bewildered by what is championed as blue chip art. Although fascinated by the biographies of established artists, I certainly do not worship the anointed sacred cows of the modern art era. I paint for myself, I do not pander to what is trending, and so be it if my work is accused of being called decorative.
Education
1993 - 1997
Massachusetts College of Art —BFA
Exhibitions
Solo
2024
2022
2014
2013
FIGURAVOLUTION, WS Gallery, Somerville, MA
HIGH MAINTENANCE, BLONDE & BEYOND, Savin Gallery, Boston
TEN, Savin Gallery, Boston
TEN, Sharon O'Farrell Gallery, Port Chester, NY
2012
NO INHERENT WISDOM, NKG, Boston
2010
EXILE, Pratt Fine Art Institute, Seattle, WA
2009
EXILE, Torah Gallery, Ashbourne, Ireland
Group
2016
2014
THE GALLERY EVENT, Charlestown, Boston
RANDOM, Savin Gallery, Boston
2014
INK, Savin Gallery, Boston
2012
2011
2009
THE LANDING Art Show, Susi Art, Braintree, MA
PLACE, NKG Boston
GROUP SHOW, Infusion Gallery, Los Angeles, California
2009
ARTENADE, London, UK –Disability Essex Fundraiser
2008
2006
ARTENADE, Nuitshus Center, the Hague, Netherlands –Red Cross Fundraiser
ART METROPOLIS, Museum of European Art, Clarence, NY