Having lived in Dublin, London, New York and LA, Charmain Fitzgerald is inspired by the unusual quirkes and nuances of her past and present surroundings and their accompanying inhabitants. She chooses oil or acrylic as her medium and her paintings are figurative and realist/surrealist, using representational form to create a sense of otherness, not detached from everyday things.

Forgoing the education route due to so much moving around, Charmain has been taking classes under established artists for the past few years, and currently works from her home in north Dublin. She is making the transition from concentrating on portrait work over to encompassing unsettling interiors and still life where your eye is caught more so by the items that should not really be there.

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RUA Conor Prize winner in 2002, Gary Devon was elected an associate member of RUA in 2006.

Born in Bangor in 1958, Gary has been painting professionally for twenty-five years, following his degree in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, London. As well as his personal work he has taken on various commissions including a painting of Kensington Palace for HRH The Prince of Wales and others for Dianna Rigg and Peter Alliss.

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Ellen McDermott's Fine Art Portraiture is portraiture with a difference. She started taking photographs to use as guides in her paintings but soon found that she was being asked by people if she would sell them her prints and take their photographs.

Ellen was picked as one of the Finalists in PhotoIreland Festival Open Call 2010. She is a Director of Kilmantin Art Gallery in Wicklow Town. Up until this year Ellen was on the Wicklow Arts Festival Committee but resigned from the board in order to concentrate more on her photography.

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Therese Mc Allister is an Irish artist who studied at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin from 1972-74. After NCAD, Therese worked as a fashion illustrator, and display artist in Dublin before deciding to move to Italy in the mid 1970's.

On her arrival in Florence, she met Pietro Annigoni (renowned for his portraits of the British Royal Family) who encouraged her to enroll at the Studio Simi. Here, under the tutelage of Nerina Simi, she studied the techniques of drawing and painting in the classical tradition.

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At the age of 31 Jay Walker returned to college studying Art and Design. It was here that abstract expressionism was to have a major influence; Jackson Pollock being the main inspirational figure. Upon leaving college he moved to Dublin, found a studio in the Docklands area and carried on painting, developing his work and absorbing the surroundings.

Jay now works from a studio in Co Carlow, at the foot of Mount Leinster. His more recent work has moved further from abstraction toward a style of impressionism; recording the change and development which is sweeping the cities throughout Ireland and in contrast the subdued tranquility of coastal and country life.

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