Brian Smyth

Brian is an award-winning graduate of the Crawford College of Art and Design (1995), and an alumnus of The Angel Academy, a school, dedicated to the training of realist drawing and painting techniques based in Florence.  At the Angel Academy, Brian was trained extensively in the art of figurative and portrait painting.  He was taught the methods and principles behind the creation of realist/naturalistic portraiture, working from both the live model and also from photographic references.

On the strength of his student work, Brian was asked to become part of the faculty of the Angel Academy, and for a number of years, was an instructor in life drawing and painting there.

In his career as an artist, he had several successful solo exhibitions of figurative, portrait, and landscape paintings in Dublin, Edinburgh, and London. He had participated in, and was asked to curate a number of group exhibitions.  He exhibits his work at and is represented by The Trinity gallery in Dublin, The Lavit gallery, in Cork, The Red Rag Gallery, in the UK, The Chimera Gallery, in Mullingar, and The Stafford Northcote gallery, Kinsale, Co. Cork.

Brian completed many private portrait commissions, which are now in private collections.  His paintings are also in the public collections of The Office of Public Works, The Allied Irish Banks, Cork Institute of Technology, Cork City Library and the Bank of Ireland.

Brian considers himself to be a contemporary realist painter.
He uses all aspects of his training, but is happy to incorporate more abstract and dynamic elements into his paintings where he feels it benefits the feel and atmosphere of a painting.