John Doherty (b.1949)

The Irish photo-realist painter and landscape artist John Doherty was born in County Kilkenny and trained as an architect at the Bolton Street College of Technology in Dublin. He then moved to Australia where he studied drawing and painting at the National College of Art, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. After extensive travels around the world, Doherty settled in Melbourne.

Homage, Clonmel, Co Tipperay. 1988

Although he has completed a number of traditional Irish landscapes, more typical subjects of his hyper-realist work (a 20th century variation of Realism) are buildings - often in small rural towns. His sharp bright canvases use delicate tones of light and dark to emphasise the silence and lack of movement in the spaces he portrays. His particular art focuses on street scenes, doors and shop fronts depicted face-on, using photo-realist techniques, in order to capture the lost optimism and neglect of aging structures. A typical visual element in his scenes are the rectangular slabs of colour found on traditional main streets throughout Ireland. Such images were also an important influence on the development of the Irish-American artist Sean Scully.

Wisdome Lane. 1987

John Doherty's landscape painting has been widely exhibited in such shows as:

"John Doherty", at the Coventry Gallery, Sydney, Australia (1977)
"John Doherty", at the Taylor Galleries, Dublin (1981)
"Irish Lights", at the Taylor Galleries, Dublin (1998)
"Recent Buoy Paintings and other Marine Objects", Taylor Galleries (2000)
"Boys and Their Toys", Taylor Galleries (2003)
"John Doherty. Recent Paintings", Taylor Galleries (2005)

In addition, Doherty has exhibited at a number of group Exhibitions, such as the Irish Exhibition of Living Art. His work is represented in several collections, including: the Waterford Municipal Art Gallery Collection, Allied Irish Bank, Merrion Hotel collection and the Institute of Modern Arts in Chicago.

Doherty won the James Adam Saleroom Award at a recent Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) exhibition. Subsequently, during a recent auction at Adam's in Dublin, Doherty's painting "Old Dockyard Building, Castletownbere" (1984) sold for €56,000 against an estimate of €10,000 to €15,000.

More Information About Visual Arts in Ireland

• For details of other photo-realist painters, see: Irish Artists: Paintings and Biographies.
• For more about Photorealism, see: Irish Art Guide.

• NOTE: To update John Doherty's biography, click Here.