Guest Artists

We provide educational events with successful Irish artists who work across a wide range of painting styles and subjects, giving students rare access to professional expertise and real-world artistic practice. By offering our students rare exposure to our talented guest artists, students can deepen technical understanding and broadens creative thinking.

Dave West
Dave West, born in Wales and currently living in Ireland, Dave West is dedicated to examining the interplay between mark-making, gesture, materials, and meaning. His travels around Ireland fuel his plein air practice with fresh subjects.

Norman Teeling
Norman Teeling stands as one of Ireland’s most accomplished impressionist painters, representing a unique bridge between traditional Irish artistic heritage and contemporary international plein air painting movements.

Guest Artist: Kathrine Geoghegan
Kathrine Geoghegan is an Irish visual artist whose work explores the rich biodiversity of Ireland’s native habitats.
Her detailed, nature-focused paintings offer an insect’s-eye view of wildflowers, boglands, and overlooked ecosystems.
Inspired by conservation, she highlights the beauty and ecological value of often-forgotten plant life.
Kathrine has exhibited widely across Ireland, with work held in public and private collections.
She is a passionate advocate for environmental awareness through art.
Her practice beautifully blends science, storytelling, and artistic sensitivity.

Guest Artist: Richard Hearns

Richard Hearns is an Irish painter based in the Burren, County Clare, originally born in Beirut. His work bridges observational and gestural abstract painting, using bold oil gestures to reflect both his dual heritage and the surrounding Irish landscape. Drawing rhythm and form from nature, his paintings often match his own height, capturing the physicality of his studio practice. Hearns’ large-scale works explore themes of identity, exploration, and the spirit of place, with recent exhibitions at Cadogan Gallery in London and Milan, MiArt, and Sotheby’s. Renowned for his vibrant color palettes and energetic mark-making, he creates immersive visual experiences that invite viewers into a contemplative dialogue between memory, nature, and presence.

Guest Artist: Margo Banks

Margo Banks is a Dublin-based Irish artist whose work is deeply inspired by the wild landscapes and folklore of her maternal roots in County Kerry. Her expressive mixed-media drawings and paintings focus on Irish wildlife—hares, crows, foxes—rendered with bold mark-making and emotional intensity. Often working on a large scale, she combines memory, mythology, and a strong connection to nature to create pieces that feel both raw and poetic. Banks also works in bronze sculpture, exploring animal forms with a sculptural energy that complements her two-dimensional work. Her art has been widely exhibited in Ireland, including at Solomon Fine Art, the RHA, the RUA, and the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, and is held in numerous public and private collections. Through her distinctive style, Banks offers a powerful reflection on the presence of the wild in both landscape and imagination.

Guest Artist: Henry McGrain

Henry McGrane is an acclaimed Irish painter from County Meath, known for his evocative landscapes and rural scenes that beautifully capture the quiet rhythms of Irish country life. Trained at Dún Laoghaire College of Art and Design, he began his career in animation before transitioning fully to fine art, honing his skills under master painters. His work often features cattle grazing in lush fields, rendered with a refined sense of light, atmosphere, and natural detail. McGrane’s plein-air approach brings immediacy and intimacy to his compositions, turning everyday rural moments into timeless visual stories. His paintings are widely collected and have been exhibited across Ireland and internationally. Through his art, McGrane offers a heartfelt tribute to the Irish landscape and the traditions that shape it.

Guest Artist: John Morris

John Morris is a Dublin-born painter known for his striking seascapes and coastal scenes. Largely self-taught, his work captures the changing light and energy of Ireland’s shoreline with expressive brushwork and rich colour. From quiet harbours to dramatic skies, his paintings reflect a deep connection to the sea and have been widely exhibited and collected in Ireland and beyond.

Guest Artist: Robert Shaw

Robert Shaw (b. 1964, Dublin) is a celebrated Irish painter specializing in landscape, marine, and abstract works. Trained at Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design in the late 1980s, he lives and paints from Donabate after years working from Howth Head, drawing inspiration from the dramatic coastline stretching north to the Mourne Mountains and east to Wales. Shaw’s plein-air and studio pieces evocatively capture the light, moods, and spiritual resonance of north Leinster shores—sensuously rendering post-storm stillness and atmospheric nuances with palette knife strokes and reflective depth.His works, featured in solo and group exhibitions across Ireland, resonate with collectors and public institutions, and are represented in both private and corporate collections internationally .

Guest Artist: Norman Teeling

Norman Teeling is a renowned Irish painter whose vibrant impressionist style captures the spirit and atmosphere of everyday Irish life. A graduate of the National College of Art and Design, he studied under leading Irish artists and went on to work internationally in animation before returning to his first love—painting. His work, often created en plein air, features energetic brushwork and a strong sensitivity to light, depicting everything from quiet coastal scenes to the lively streets of Dublin. Notably, his ten-panel series commemorating the 1916 Rising is permanently displayed in the GPO. With a career spanning decades, Teeling’s art reflects both technical mastery and a deep emotional connection to Ireland’s landscape, history, and people.