Born in 1981 in County Clare, Ireland, Emmet Kierans develops a dreamlike figurative painting nourished by intimate memory and popular culture. Based in London , he explores the mental images that haunt the contemporary psyche, between dream and reality.
Trained at the Limerick School of Art and Design (BFA, First Class Honours), then at the Glasgow School of Art (MFA, First Class Honours), Kierans draws on cinema, storytelling and collective rituals to reveal the buried desires of our unconscious.
His oil paintings, constructed through fine translucent overlays, bring to life familiar scenes that have become strangely suspended —proms frozen in anticipation, Disney characters with ghostly allure.
From adolescent rituals to mythical figures of childhood, his paintings question the way in which these stories are imprinted on our emotional memory, mixing enchantment, irony and disquiet.
Since 2007, Emmet Kierans has exhibited regularly in the UK, Ireland and internationally, including at the Royal Academy of Arts (Summer Exhibition), the National Gallery of Ireland (Zurich Portrait Prize), the Crawford Art Gallery (Cork), and the Royal Hibernian Academy (Dublin).
His works are included in the public collections of the Arts Council of Ireland , Trinity College Dublin , the Office of Public Works (Ireland) , as well as numerous private collections in the UK, Europe and the USA.
