ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Daniel Coleman (b.1994, Armagh) is an Irish Artist based in the North of Ireland and is a studio holder of QSS, Belfast. He has exhibited extensively since graduating with First Class honours in Fine Art Painting from the Belfast School of Art (2016). Selected solo, group and two person exhibitions include, ‘a kind of dark’, Lavit Gallery, Cork (2025) (two person exhibition with Ciara Roche, curated by Brian Mac Domhnaill), ‘At The Foot Of The Mountain’, Arcade Studios, Belfast (2025) (solo), ‘As Far As The Eye Can See’, F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio, Banbridge, Down (2025) (group exhibition, curated by Dr Riann Coulter and Feargal O’Malley), ‘RHA Annual Exhibition’, RHA, Dublin (2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 & 2019), ‘The Hennessy Craig Award and The Homan Potterton Prize’, RHA, Dublin (2024), ‘Main Exhibition’, Boyle Arts Festival, Roscommon (2025, 2024 & 2022), ‘The First International Biennial Exhibition’, Ballinglen Arts Foundation and Museum, Mayo (2023-2024), ‘SHADOWS ON THE WALL’, The Georgian Gallery, Ards Arts Centre, Newtownards, Down (2023) (solo), ‘MATTERS OF TABLE’, Periphery Space, Wexford (2023), ‘URGENCIES (2023)’, CCA, Derry (2023) (group exhibition, curated by Joy Gerrard and Catherine Hemelryk), ‘New Exits: 10 Years of Painting Shows’, The MAC, Belfast (2022–2023) (group exhibition, curated by Dougal McKenzie and Hugh Mulholland), ‘Ag dul i dtreo na gréine’, Arcade Studios, Belfast (2022), ‘Curacha’, National University of Ireland, Galway and Áras Éanna, Inis Oírr, Galway (2021) (touring exhibition) (Installed as part of the Galway International Arts Festival and Galway Culture Night 2021), ‘PeripheriesOPEN’, Periphery Space, Wexford (2018), ‘Adˈvɑːnst’, Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast (2017), ‘Very Good Waves Now’, Catalyst Arts, Belfast (2016) and ‘All That Remains’, The Braid, Ballymena, Antrim (2016) (solo). He is a member of the drawing collective, ‘The Drawing Journal’, collaborations include, ‘Quiet Wanders Laughing’, Hyde Bridge Gallery, Sligo (2023), ‘Thing;’, Ards Arts Centre, Newtownards, Down (2021) and ‘Image of Thought’, Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, Belfast (2020–2021).
Daniel is the recipient of the Interface Inagh Residency Award, Connemara, Galway, supported by An Chomhairle Ealaíon (2024), the RHA/ Áras Éanna Residency Award, Inis Oírr, Galway (2021) and has been shortlisted twice for The Hennessy Craig Award and The Homan Potterton Prize, RHA, Dublin (Forthcoming 2026 & 2024). He was nominated for the Arts Foundation Futures Award 2026 for Visual Art (Forthcoming 2026), invited to be part of the Woodland Symposium at Interface Inagh, Connemara, Galway, supported by An Chomhairle Ealaíon (Forthcoming 2026 & 2025) and was longlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize (2025). He has been awarded funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (2023/24 & 2021), and the Freelands Foundation (2020). His work can be found in public and private collections throughout Ireland (including the OPW, Dublin), UK (London) and USA (Boston).
In addition to his own practice as an Artist, he is a Teacher of Art & Design, Media, Moving Image Arts and SEN. He was an invited Guest Lecturer for BA Fine Art, at Liverpool Hope, University, Liverpool (2021).
ARTIST STATEMENT
Daniel Coleman explores the impermanence of life and the significance of the everyday. His work is steeped in symbolism and meaning, in relation to his rural Irish upbringing. Through the ritual of making, he aims to link the themes of identity, place, loss, time, and memory. The works of Irish writers, poets and playwrights navigate a lot of the themes within his work.
The figure, objects and the family home are at the forefront of his practice. The ancestral home is central to his research. He investigates the relationship one has with the interior and the exterior landscape, with a particular interest in addressing the solitude. Relying on memory, he then seeks to deconstruct spaces and rebuild them through the medium of paint, creating new places entirely - places that feel familiar yet unfamiliar.
Objects and their contexts inform his art. An inanimate object can contain emotional memory and act as a vehicle to other times and places. Therefore, he selects key objects to act as a catalyst for memories. In painting them he hopes to create another catalytic object - a means of exploring transience and history. In his treatment of the figure, he applies the same process of ‘objectification’. The process of wiping the identities of his subjects and suffocating them through the medium, ultimately celebrates the physical properties of the paint itself.
Daniel Coleman’s paintings are by no means certain of themselves, much like the artist, they are quiet but constantly overthinking.
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