About

Sinéad Smyth is an experienced artist and facilitator. She was born and raised in Inishowen, Co. Donegal and has spent time travelling across Europe, North Africa and South America. She has recently dedicated herself to painting full time and renovating an old cottage beside her home into a studio and gallery.

Sinéad worked as an artist in the community for 22 years, beginning with the Belfast City Council in 1995. She has worked with The Turner Prize, The Thames Festival, The British Council, City of Culture 2013 and many public bodies, on cross-cultural, single identity, cross-community and public art projects. Her paintings and installations have been shown nationally and internationally.

Sinéad Smyth is based on the Inishowen peninsula, County Donegal, Ireland.

Painting

Sinéad is an Irish contemporary artist painting mainly in oils. Her paintings communicate emotional experience, the atmosphere and energies of landscape and people.

Her work is based largely on emotional response and is derived from everyday observations of people, landscapes (real and imagined) co-dependencies and storytelling. She records in writing, by sketch and photographic references, developing paintings and installations from various stances and instances, often painting en plien air. Her aim is to capture the essence of her chosen subject, creating the illusion of detail through energetic mark making, focusing on impressionistic abstraction.

Sinead’s work reflects her love of observation and is heavily influenced by her travels, which is demonstrated by her use of colour and space.

Sinéad is self-taught, painting and drawing since she was very young. She has spent time studying and working with several professional artists. In 2010, she won an award for her portrait in oil at the “Open Your Mind Exhibition”, NUS-USI, Northern Ireland. She has exhibited in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Europe.

Her work is based largely on emotional response and is derived from everyday observations of people, landscapes (real and imagined) co-dependencies and storytelling. She records in writing, by sketch and photographic references, developing paintings and installations from various stances and instances, often painting en plein air. Her aim is to capture the essence of her chosen subject, creating the illusion of detail through energetic mark making, often focusing on impressionistic abstraction.

Sinéad creates portraits and landscapes which communicate and interpret the energy and spirit emanating from the land and the people of this rural peninsula, the most northerly point in Ireland.

Sinéad has been interviewed by the BBC Arts Show for Radio 4 as ‘an artist worth watching’ and was featured in their ‘highlights of the year’ programme in December 2016. She has been invited to participate in the Main Exhibition of the Boyle Arts Festival at King House for the past two years.

Her work is held in the collection of Belfast City Council and in private collections in Ireland, Northern Ireland, England and France and is a founder member of the Rural Arts Network, a group created to support, encourage and exhibit rural artists’ work.

These semi-abstract landscapes are executed in heavy, buttery oil paint which she applies by brush, knife and by hand. This technique is combined with a confident use of intense colour. These lush atmospheric paintings have wide appeal and are highly collectable.

Janet Ross, Ross Fine Art

Community Engagement

Sinéad has been organising, enabling and facilitating arts-related projects for over two decades and has worked on several collaborative art projects on both sides of the Irish border, including the City of Culture/Thames Festival ‘Rivers of the World‘ Project. She has worked with many other councils including Causeway Coasts and Glens District Council, Derry and Strabane District Council and Donegal County Council.