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News > News from Past Pupils > Artist Paul Hughes - Class of 84

Artist Paul Hughes - Class of 84

Paul will open Exhibit of his Art in New York May 17 - 21 2023

Paul went to Willow Park 1973-79, Blackrock College 1979-84 before attending UCD 1984-1988 on a soccer scollorship where he was awarded an honours degree in English & Economics.

He played League of Ireland for UCD 1985-1991 and was part of a team that was crowned world University champions 1986.

Hisa early work career included Saatchi&Saatchi Advertising Ireland 1988-1990, Publicis Ireland 1990-1993, Director Saatchi&Saatchi Advertising Worldwide (Middle East)1993-95 and was Founder of Rothco Advertising Group 1995. As a recepient of multiple Global Award wins including Cannes Grand Prix's his venture into the art world was something that was on the cards for a long time.

Pauls Art Life:

Paul is a self-taught artist. Driven by physicality and expressionistic approach his commitment to his art career took off when his football career ended due to injury in 1991. He spent10 years undertaking  various NCAD part time courses at night and working privately on commissions.

In 2004 Tramyard Gallery in Dalkey started representing him and after multiple group shows he held his first solo exhibition in 2006 in Tramyard. In 2009 He was picked up by The Kings Road Gallery in London and Tanya Baxter Contemporary Art in london and Hong Kong and hosted multiple london and Hong Kong shows 2009-2023

He started showing again in Ireland in 2019  with The Stone Step Gallery and various Irish galleries.

-New Exhibition 'Bastard Blue' series launched in The Complex in 'one man, one night' show in 2022 which he is now brininging to the Volta Art Fairs New York May 2023 show.

Paul is a Full Time professional artist.

 "For a long time I struggled with blue, for me it was the colour of logic, order, organisation. And while I’ve nothing against logic, it’s never been how I work.

"My process doesn’t do order, my paintings don’t start with a destination. Instead they’re born in the chaos of the doing, painted on the ground, they evolve, they mutate, depending on the light that day, the music I’m listening to, as I move in constant motion around them. And that wasn’t blue. And then, like the lover in a Charlotte Brontë or Jane Austen story that the protagonist first hates but then loves, blue revealed itself. I started surrounded by the wild elemental scapes of land, sea and sky, between the Beara and the Iveragh on the Atlantic-lashed coasts near Kenmare.

"There, looking at its blues, sometimes for days on end, I saw blue wasn’t order or calm, it was wild, seductive, raw, ungrounded. That it wasn’t one shade, it was a million. That far from being the reassuring presence of the paintbox, it was the maddest, craziest, bastard there was – that, like the sirens of Greek mythology, could change from softness to malevolence in a split second.

And that’s what I wanted to paint."

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