Hector McDonnell

The present work demonstrates McDonnell's long running preoccupation with the interior. The oblique angle from which he presents the view of The Adventure Room emphasises the architectural structure of the building in contrast to the domestic setting, reflecting the artist's traditional training as a draughtsman at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford.  

Having grown up at Glenarm Castle, Co. Antrim, McDonnell studied in Munich, Vienna and Oxford and during the 1970s and 1980s, he exhibited extensively with Fischer Fine Art in London and Paris. In 1978 he was awarded the Darmstadter Kunstpreis which led to an exhibition of over two hundred of his paintings, drawings and etchings at the Kunsthalle Darmstadt in 1981. McDonnell returned to Ireland in 1992, where he has exhibited at the Bell Gallery, Belfast, Solomon Gallery, Dublin, and Grant Fine Art, Newcastle. He has been a regular contributor to the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts since 1985 and a retrospective of his work was held at the Ulster Museum, Belfast in 2003.