Artist Jack Hickey tells Cristín Leach that his influences range from Caravaggio to Nan Goldin
Jack Hickey was the standout painter of his graduating year at the Crawford College of Art in 2011. Six years later, he won the Hennessy Portrait Prize at the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) with My Time (2017), a painting of a woman lying on a bed, captured in his instantly recognisable, near-filmic photorealist style. Hickey went on to paint former State Pathologist Professor Marie Cassidy for the NGI Portrait Collection and has since completed a commissioned portrait of Professor Mary Horgan, President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, and a portrait for the Irish Naval Service of retired Flag Officer Hugh Tully (Fig 4). The Tully portrait hangs in the officers’ mess at Haulbowline, along with other officers’ portraits at the Cork naval base, where the eyewatering attention to detail Hickey achieves on polished buttons and shirt stitching is a source of admiration and discussion. It’s one of the most photorealistic oil portraits he has made.
To read this article in full, subscribe or buy this edition of the Irish Arts Review
What is urgent for artists working in Ireland? Sarah Kelleher explores the RDS Visual Art Awards at the Irish Museum of Modern Art
John P O’Sullivan surveys Mick O’Dea’s paintings of characters from the playwright Seán O’Casey’s plays
There is a confidence about Mollie Douthit’s practice, which is slow and considered, writes Margarita Cappock
