In collaboration with Hallows Fine Art Gallery and Framers August 2022
Homeland at Hallows Gallery was the first time showing my artwork in public. This was a collaborative show with established Belfast artist Paul Doran where we had both created a range of abstract paintings using acrylic and oil paint around the theme of ‘home’ and what it meant to us. As well as our own work we also created our first collaboration painting called ‘Homeland’. We created this piece in Paul Doran’s studio in Drumbo over a number of weeks where we both expressed our own artist styles to the canvas representing what home meant to us. This felt particularly special to me at the time as this was a few months before my wife and I were due to move back home to Belfast for the birth of our son after spending the previous 14 years in England. We loved our time spent in Cambridge, Manchester and London but could never shake the feeling that we were meant to be living back in the North of Ireland, where we are both from and so this show felt like the beginning of our new lives back in Belfast.
After leaving my 9-5 desk job the previous September and taking the terrifying leap into life as a full-time artist, to have my first show the following summer felt like a huge achievement. Up until this point most people besides my close friends and family had only ever seen my work online so for Hallows Gallery to give my work the chance to be seen in tangible form for the first time felt huge.
Lucky for us the 13th August was one of the most beautiful hot sunny days of the summer which certainly helped the turnout at Hallows Gallery. It was important to us to set the right tone bringing music and art together and Belfast born London DJ Nina Patrice certainly did that with her distinctive minimal techno seeping out onto the famed Ormeau Road. We also heard some beautiful words from local Poet Ryan Irwin with his take on the theme of home to kick off the evening.
It was so great to see so many show up to support and buy art from local contemporary artists with us both selling quite a few of our solo pieces as well as our collaborative piece ‘Homeland’.
As my first show this was all a huge learning experience about how galleries curate their shows, how to select and display your work and the importance of PR and marketing for exposure. The Hallows Gallery were the first gallery to give me a shot and I will always be thankful to them for that.
