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Diarmuid Breen 


I was born in Cork City, and still reside here. I completed the BA in Visual Arts degree on Sherkin Island in 2012, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of my time there, since then my artistic career has been steadily gaining momentum. I, very recently, took the plunge and gave up engineering to focus on my painting.

My current body of paintings come under the working title “Existing Realities”. The inspiration for these paintings draws on the human experience.  The uncertainty, strangeness & banal nature of everyday life, is portrayed using sources found in old books and photographs, giving the paintings a nostalgic sense but still pertinent to contemporary experience.  I have been working under this project title now on and off for the last four years, I also enjoy painting urban landscapes, especially the Cork dockland area.

My influences are various, I try to get to as many exhibitions as I can, and find I am inspired by standing in front of great works, Velasquez in the Prado Madrid earlier this year was like a Religious experience. The Lucian Freud exhibition in IMMA was another. I think my paintings have a Belgian sensibility, having lived there for a year. I like the idea of a dialogue between a painting and the viewer.

My process for painting starts with a small watercolour sketch, I keep a separate sketch book for each project I’m working on, and at the moment I have three sketchbooks on the go. I spend time with the sketches and pick out the ones I think have potential, from them I make a full size preparatory painting on paper and if I’m satisfied with it, I paint it on canvas.