Carey Clarke
Born in Donegal in 1936, and educated in Dublin, Carey Clarke studied at the National College of Art from 1954 to 1959 and taught there continuously from the year of his graduation to 1995. He exhibited at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art for the first time in 1956, and contributed subsequently to numerous group shows at the RHA and elsewhere. Clarke enrolled at the Salzburg Academy for the summer of 1969, and spent a year's sabbatical in 1976 researching tempera painting in Florence. He was elected a member of the RHA in 1980, served as President of the Academy from 1992 to 1995, and is also a member of the Cork Arts society and the Watercolour Society of Ireland.
He has won several awards, among them the Royal Society's prize for portraiture and the Taylor Art Scholarship (in both instances while still a student at the NCA), the keating/McLoughlin Bursary for Art (1985) and a silver medal at the RHA annual exhibition. Clarke established himself as one of the most prominent and sought-after portrait painters active in Ireland over several decades. His sitters include Dr Garret Fitzgerald, Albert Reynolds, and Prof. Corinna Lonergan (TCD). He also paints and exhibits still-life and landscape.
