Ultraviolet Art Talks

Closing superbly this special Season 17, Caren Sullivan talks to artist Lee Welch in his studio. Also Watch full Instagram interview here.

Lee Welch is an artist who works in painting, drawing, and installation, but his true medium is the space between knowing and not knowing—the familiar made strange. His paintings are fragments of a dream you can’t quite place: figures and objects pared to their essence, hovering in a world both intimate and alien. Emerging from the shadows of art history, architecture, literature, and tennis, as well as his own private archive, Welch’s work distills, abstracts, and rebuilds, creating a visual language entirely his own. Figures appear in domestic scenes or leisure, their mundane actions charged with eerie resonance. They feel close yet distant, their flattened forms and muted textures like memories just out of reach. Welch’s paintings are not just seen; they are felt—a faint ache, a distant hum, lingering long after you’ve looked away.

Lee Welch was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1975 and currently lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. Welch creates gestural, atmospheric paintings that attest to the psychical and emotional depths of his chosen subjects and map out delicate negotiations between beauty, desire, and the painted image. Depicting figures from his own milieu, as well as from history, literature, music, and tennis, Welch finds feeling in that which he depicts, always rendered with the intensity of his particular humanism; a close looking akin to love. In each subject’s specificity, the artist reveals the universal feelings that connect us to each other, and that stretch from our present moment back through time.
Welch received his BFA from the National College of Art and Design in 2009 and his MFA from Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam in 2011. Currently based at the dlr Baths Artist Studios, he has previously held residencies at NCAD, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the Banff Centre for Arts, the latter supported by the Arts Council.

Welch received his BFA from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in 2009 and his MFA from Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam in 2011. He has since been widely exhibited internationally and received numerous awards. Recent exhibitions have taken place at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University; Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), León, Spain; Glucksman Gallery, Cork; Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. His paintings are in private and public collections such as the MB Art Foundation, the Arts Council, Hugh Lane Gallery, and the OPW - State Art Collection.

Lee Welch is part of the duo Hallahan & Welch, a curatorial partnership founded by Paul Hallahan and Lee Welch, two artists with a deep-rooted commitment to the Irish arts scene. Having established influential artist-led spaces in the late 2000s, Hallahan with SOMA (Waterford) and Welch with FOUR (Dublin), the duo has spent over a decade fostering platforms for contemporary art through economic and social shifts.

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For more information, follow Lee Welch on Instagram @_leewelch_

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On this episode, Caren Sullivan talks to artist Matthew Coll in 2024 in a super studio visit! Watch full Instagram episode here.

Matthew Coll is an Irish artist based in Dublin. He graduated from NCAD’s Fine Art Painting BA in 2022 and works predominantly in painting, sculpture and installation.

His work is part of several private and public collections, including the Office of Public Works, St Vincent’s University Hospital and Teeling Whiskey Distillery. He has received several awards, including NCAD's Clancy Quay Studio Graduate Residency Award 2023/2024, the Arts Council’s Agility Award 2023 and Fingal County Council's Artists’ Support Scheme Bursaries 2023 & 2025.

His current work focuses on the subject matter of crowds, exploring the influence between the collective and the individual, how shared energies of bliss or discontent become channelled into constructive and destructive forces. Utilising found imagery and photography from daily life as a starting point for source imagery.

Painting actual and imagined gatherings, ranging from joyous raves to turbulent riots, aiming to depict a reality slipping away, where Real and Unreal become indistinguishable. Distorting the origin of the image through the painting process, often dragging, sanding, scraping and pouring paint across the surface and occasionally deconstructing structural components, pursuing a simultaneous harmony and conflict between points of representation and abstraction. Whilst frequently working on found or discarded materials as the painting surface.

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For more information, follow Matthew Coll on Instagram @matthewcoll.art
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On this episode, Caren Sullivan visits artist Leah Hewson in her studio in 2024. Always wanted to know what is like to be inside an artist studio? Watch full Instagram interview here.

Leah Hewson has a First-Class BA(Hons) degree in Fine Art from IADT, Dublin Ireland.

Solo exhibitions include 'Kin Connection', The Royal Hibernian Academy (2024), ‘Blowout’ Stoney Road Press, INK Miami(2022), 'Ammo Veil' ,Hillsboro Fine Art gallery (2018) and ‘Scintilla’, The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2017) which was the culmination of work produced during a six-month residency at The RHA School. Other residencies include Nars Foundation, Brooklyn, New York (2018), SIM Residency, Berlin (2019) and Wilton Park Studios Residency, Dublin in (2019 -20), Facebook AIR program (2020).

Hewson won the Whyte's Award for painting at the 190th RHA Annual Exhibition, was shortlisted for the Hennessy Craig Biennial Award in 2019 and is accredited with the Elizabeth Fitzpatrick Travel Bursary Award 2018.

Hewson's work continues to be collected internationally, including being auctioned at Sotheby's, while public collections include The Trinity College Dublin History of Art collection, The Office of Public Works, Dublin, The Law Society of Ireland, the Microsoft Collection, Fidelity Investments and The Cleveland Clinic.

Hewson recently created an installation for Art on Paper in New York in 2022, and more recently Beyond the Pale Festival and has painted murals at Stoney Road Press and Kicky's restaurant in Dublin.

Artist Statement;

"“Beneath the threshold of conscious awareness lies the unconscious mind. Accounting for approximately 95% of total brain activity, this domain governs much of human cognition through automatic and affective mechanisms. It serves as a dynamic archive of experiences, memories, and associative patterns that shape our perception, decision-making, and behaviour. These shared unconscious processes also connects us as humans on a deeper level across cultures through our collective unconscious.

I aim to explore this hidden space through an introspective painting practice. My goal is to find freedom in expression—free from social expectations or aesthetic rules. Inspired by Jung’s theory of Individuation, I access the unconscious through practices that create a state of flow, such as meditation, automatic writing, and movement. In the studio, I adopt an impulsive and instinctive relationship to colour, materials, and techniques, remaining open to any possibility. I listen to hypnotic repetitive music through headphones and work on multiple pieces at once in order to let go of control and create the optimal environment for flow state to emerge.

The work begins with pure abstract movement and evolves into a dialogue between unconscious gestures and conscious symbols. Through this process, a visual language of layered patterns and grids emerges that is complex yet playful and invites a contemplative platform between individual and collective experience.

The dance between elements and layers in the paintings signals the impossibility of remaining solely in the realm of the unconscious. Taking these elements from my abstract lexicon, I extend my artistic expression into supplementary forms such as installation, sculpture, and murals. This is an attempt to hold the unconscious experiences that feature in the present reality and offer them a space of their own to exist as symbols and beacons of the unconscious.”

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For more information, follow Leah Hewson on Instagram @leahewson
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Opening a Special Season 17, Caren Sullivan visits artist Mia Shattock in her studio in 2024, find out what happens behind the scenes of an artist studio!
You can also watch full interview here.

Mia Shattock is a painter from Dublin, Ireland, interested in how film narratives permeate our understanding of reality and how media imagery moulds our sense of self in the digital age. Her large scale oil paintings capture the unseen elements of media portrayal. She uses a monochrome palette, building some up in full colour glazes to exude a dreamlike quality, or leaving the underpainting as its final form. The work dismantles ideas of hyperreality, prompting viewers to acknowledge the pervasive presence of media constructs, initiating a dialogue between film and philosophy and unravelling the intricacies of human emotion and perception as they intersect with cinema.

Education
2023 MFA in Fine Art, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland.
2022 CFA Introduction to the Creative Use of Archives, IADT, Dublin, Ireland
2022-23 London Fine Art Studios Representational Art Course series, Online, London Fine Art Studios
2018-22 Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art (Studio Plus), National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland, awarded first class honours
2017-18 QQI Level 5 in Art, Graphics and Print-making, Ballyfermot College of Further Education, Dublin, Ireland

Selected Exhibitions
2024 Artworks 2024: Behind the Curtain, group show, VISUAL Carlow, Old Dublin Road, Carlow.
2024 NCAD MFA Graduate Showcase, NCAD, Thomas Street, Dublin, Ireland
2024 Cracks in the mirror, workshop and display, Hugh Lane Gallery, Parnell Square, Dublin, Ireland
2023 Art Riddler Exhibition, group show, 10 Wicklow Street, Dublin, Ireland
2023 Dublin Modular: SUSTAIN, group show, Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, Ireland
2023 Bigger Than Us, group show, Rua Red Arts Centre, Dublin, Ireland
2022 Art Riddler Exhibition, group show, 10 Wicklow Street, Dublin, Ireland
2022 NCAD Degree show, NCAD, Dublin, Ireland
2022 Painting as an Expression of Humanity, group show, National Treasury Management Agency, Dublin, Ireland
2022 Narrative Structures of Anticipation, NCAD Margaret Clarke Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
2021 Dublin Art Book Fair 2021: Manual, Collective Zine, Temple bar gallery and studios, Dublin, Ireland
2021 Positives: Painting in the Pandemic 2021, Online group show, National Treasury Management Agency, Dublin, Ireland
2020 Ballyfermot College 30 year anniversary exhibition, Group show, Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, Ireland (postponed)

Awards, Residencies and Publications
2022 Clancy Quay Superprojects Professional Development Programme
2022 Awarded Arts Council Visual Arts Agility Award
2022 Shortlisted for Ormond Art Studios Graduate Residency Award
2021 Dublin Art Book Fair 2021: Manual, Collective Zine, Temple bar gallery and studios, Dublin, Ireland
Collections
2024 Private collections
2023 Private collections
2022 National Treasury Management Agency, Dublin, Ireland
2022 Private Collections
2018 Ballyfermot College of Further Education Art Collection, Dublin, Ireland

Enjoyed this episode? Follow Ultraviolet Art Talks on Instagram @_ultravioletarttalks_
For more information, follow Mia Shattock on Instagram @miashattockartist

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Closing Season 16, Caren Sullivan talks to artist Maeve Brennan in 2023.

Maeve Brennan is a painter working in oils. Her work is detail oriented, precise and time consuming.

It is realist and utilises photography as source material. It moves between the current and the past making connections between both, often merging these via multiple images of the same object or place.

She is interested in the symbolism of the seemingly mundane-the everyday in objects and spaces, and the emotions they provoke. Light plays an integral role, particularly in my interior paintings. Feelings of vulnerability, fragility and sentimentality are her typical starting points which can provoke a sense of painful nostalgia.

The resulting work strives to draw attention to the details of the human condition, and to catalogue a sense of her own place in the world.

Enjoyed this episode? Follow Ultraviolet Art Talks on Instagram @_ultravioletarttalks_
For more information, follow Maeve Brennan on Instagram @maevebrennanartist

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