Like, follow, share: The Irish artists you need to know on Instagram
Some of the best homegrown visual art that you can find on social media - and in person
From painting murals and prints to tattoos, Victoria Levins is a much sought-after artist, based in Dublin. Being queer pervades informs her work, and her sense of pride and belonging radiates from her work. Most recently, she took part in We Are Mná, an event that raised over €15,000 for Women's Aid, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, and the Danú Project where 8 tattoo artists spent over 11 hours tattooing in a marathon fundraiser.
Victoria paints with coffee and a documentary (available on YouTube) called The Passion Project shows her process. Her portrait of Judy Garland can be seen on Dublin's George's Street accompanied by the words Trans Love. Both Sam Smith and Macklemore have reposted her portraits of them.
- View her work on vldc_tattoo and a wider variety of her art @victorialevinsofficial
If you're into fun, bold illustrations, a dollop of dog memes and references to 90s dance bangers, you'll love Jacky Sheridan. The illustrator and lecturer of art at Ulster University creates vibrant work with a massive helping of humour. Although she has worked with a slew of commercial clients including Cadbury, TikTok, Jameson, and JustEat, the common thread in most of her work is breaking the bias around what women can achieve. This includes a billboard for FAI women's football, a cover illustration for Here and Queer: The Queer Girls Guide to Life by Rowan Ellis, and facilitating banner-making workshops at Banana Block Belfast as part of International Women's Day.
Creating art comes innately for Jacky:
"I've always been a creative person since I was a kid, it's not a case of necessarily sitting down and willing myself to draw but more of a compelling urge to express myself through stupid doodles - whether it's about a serious cause I care about or just how I feel about hot sauce."
With over 5.6k followers on Instagram, Jacky loves the social networking that it allows.
"Instagram has always been a good place to meet and chat crap with other creatives about freelance woes, mess about with your sketchbook work, and get feedback from your internet mates before launching a product into the world."
- Follow Jacky @jackysheridan
Cork-born, London-based artist Conor Harrington and is the painter responsible for the giant mural of an 18th-century figure laying a table of food in Bishop Lucey Park using raw materials from Pat McDonnell Paints.
Having cut his teeth creating graffiti art in his native Cork, Conor has accrued worldwide acclaim, painting murals in New York, Miami, Paris, London, Warsaw, Copenhagen, Sao Paulo, San Juan, and the Bethlehem Wall to name but a few.
Merging techniques from both classic and modernist painting, Conor deals not just in murals, but in fine art paintings; Rage and Reprisals, an oil and spray painting on canvas is on sale for £45,000 at the Hicks Gallery in London. A graduate of Limerick's School of Art and Design, Conor explores notions of masculinity in his work by depicting historical and imagined characters warring and fighting.
Hennessy Portrait Prize Winner 2017, Jack Hickey hails from Cobh, Co Cork. His paintings have been categorised as photorealism due to the hyper-realistic form they take. Jack's work reflects the longing for connection between humans; think naked young people in rented accommodation, discarded contraceptive pill packets, as well as portrait commissions like the one of former state pathologist, Marie Cassidy, which hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland.
A graduate of the Crawford School of Art and Design, Jack recently created a large-scale mural of Rory Gallagher commissioned by Sea Church in Ballycotton for Cloyne GAA.
- Follow Jack @jackhickey_artist
Fashion designer-turned-photographer/director Marion Bergin has lensed subjects in both observational and poetic styles. Visually arresting pieces navigate the intimate moments of connection between human beings; whether that's her documentary Saoirse, a depiction of inner city Dublin working class people and their horses, or capturing naked women sea swimming together.
Marion found her tribe on Instagram.
"It has been a great way to feel part of a community in a digital space. I express my creativity by sharing my ideas, work, throughs and collaborations on there. I also travel and work solo a lot so at those times it’s a way to stay part of something and not feel isolated."
Although Marion loves stories and is leaning into reels as a method of communication, she is conscious of limiting her time on the app.
"I can overwhelm if I don’t keep an eye on my digital habits. I am mindful of not consuming too much content and pulling my imagination in lots of different directions because I get excited about it all. I like to think I have a healthy relationship with the space."
As you read this I am in quarantine, Marion is in a hotel room in Hong Kong ahead of the launch of her art film at the Hong Kong Architecture Biennale, an immersive film on sea swimming commissioned by Robert Bourke Architects and supported by Areaman Productions. The visit is being made possible by Culture Ireland and Marion will be documenting the entire trip on her Instagram account.
Alan Clarke is probably best known for the un-focking-believable ort as the illustrator of the Ross O'Carroll-Kelly series. His main sidekick is Art Studio Cat, the feline-in-residence at Dublin's La Catedral Studios. Alan recently illustrated the cover of a book from seanchaí Eddie Lenihan, a collection of stories from a resident of the Ennis psychiatric institution in the seventies and eighties.
Rooted in the traditional, Alan draws inspiration from the figurative and character-driven, beautiful, virtuosic, imaginative, and sometimes grotesque. He is currently working on two portrait sculpture commissions and the casting of a figure he began last year. Alan is inspired by both history and imagination and is working on a new collection of drawings and etchings, based on an imagined pre-Celtic baroque, to be exhibited at the United Arts Club in Dublin in Spring. He also facilitates workshops in the RHA, as well as in his home studio in Wicklow.
Instagram has undoubtedly opened doors for Alan, although he has somewhat of a love/hate relationship with the social media platform.
"I wouldn’t have even known the doors were there closed. For example, last year I spent two weeks teaching a workshop in Moscow which came about solely through a connection I made on Instagram. My studio has four windows, I consider Instagram to be like a fifth window into my studio, that anyone in the world can look through.
Alan says his account is "carefully curated" to give the veneer of success, it also gives him a platform to voice his grievances with the bureaucracy of Irish art.
While in one way, Alan "despises" Instagram which he feels "peddles poisonous fictions of success", he also feels its existence allows ways of "sharing photos of my work with anyone in the world, and of making connections with other artists I admire and learning about things I am interested in, all for free”.
- Follow Alan @mralanclarke
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