Cristín Leach talks with Cian McLoughlin, whose ongoing interest in the painting of crowds is ‘accidentally topical‚’
Dublin-based painter Cian McLoughlin’s ‘Tronie‚’ series of abstract heads came to prominence in 2014 when one was shortlisted for the inaugural Hennessy Portrait Prize at the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI). In 2019, the NGI purchased a painting from that series inspired by the Flemish Baroque and Dutch Golden Age tronie (or face) genre. In the past three years, he has shifted his focus to producing large paintings of crowds, the first of which was shown at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2019.
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