Richard Gorman
Richard Gorman was born in Dublin and studied art at Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design from 1980. Gorman worked in his family’s firm and travelled extensively for a period before he turned his attention to art. He had his first solo exhibition at Project Arts Centre in 1983 and moved to Milan soon after in the mid 1980s.
His work has evolved from his early metal welded sculpture, which he now rejects, to paintings with an overt narrative and emotional content. He is now associated his geometric coloured paintings and works on paper , ‘clear in their process and non-rhetorical. Patrick T Murphy, Director of the RHA said of his paintings that it was enough to view Gorman’s work ‘and experience the pleasure of shape, line, colour, texture, scale and realise that in that alone may be the essential effect of painting’. This body of work is inspired from his protracted visits to Japan over the past two decades and the the tension of both geometric forms and simplified blocks of colour.
Of his achievements, Gorman was the first Irish artist to design a carré scarf for Hermès in 2014. He has won a number of awards and residencies including the Cultural Relations Committee of the Department of Foreign Affairs Bursary in 1988, The Arts Council of Ireland Award in 1990, 1991 and 1993, the Pollock-Krasner Award in New York in 1995, the Cultural Relations Committee Ireland for Gallery IHN, Seoul and Culture Ireland Grant for solo exhibitions at Mitaka City Gallery of Art, Tokyo; Ashikaga City Gallery of Art, Japan. In 2003 he was elected member of Aosdána and a full member of RHA in 2005.
Read More
His work has evolved from his early metal welded sculpture, which he now rejects, to paintings with an overt narrative and emotional content. He is now associated his geometric coloured paintings and works on paper , ‘clear in their process and non-rhetorical. Patrick T Murphy, Director of the RHA said of his paintings that it was enough to view Gorman’s work ‘and experience the pleasure of shape, line, colour, texture, scale and realise that in that alone may be the essential effect of painting’. This body of work is inspired from his protracted visits to Japan over the past two decades and the the tension of both geometric forms and simplified blocks of colour.
Of his achievements, Gorman was the first Irish artist to design a carré scarf for Hermès in 2014. He has won a number of awards and residencies including the Cultural Relations Committee of the Department of Foreign Affairs Bursary in 1988, The Arts Council of Ireland Award in 1990, 1991 and 1993, the Pollock-Krasner Award in New York in 1995, the Cultural Relations Committee Ireland for Gallery IHN, Seoul and Culture Ireland Grant for solo exhibitions at Mitaka City Gallery of Art, Tokyo; Ashikaga City Gallery of Art, Japan. In 2003 he was elected member of Aosdána and a full member of RHA in 2005.
Read More
