Simon Coleman

 

Woman knitting by family home - Ink on Paper

Simon Coleman was a celebrated landscape artist and nationally commissioned painter. He specialised in watercolour; developing an impressive combination of colour wash and fine detail. His work often captured the contrasts between rolling skies and windswept trees with miniscule grass and plant-life in the foreground. He utilised a wide-ranging palette, opting for more intense, violent colours in his Dublin scenes, and subtle pastel tones in his pastoral paintings.

Coleman was born in the small village of Duleek, County Meath and his rural childhood influenced his lifelong fascination with folklore. His studies of village life in pen and ink capture his sense of both the idealisation and alienation of the rural idyll. In his later life Coleman worked for the folklore commission and was integral to the expansion of its collection of objects. His rural scenes combine a sense of mythical nostalgia with the living presence of historical memory.

Coleman was a renowned and widely respected artist in his lifetime. He was, most famously, commissioned to paint the first meeting of President Hyde's Council of State. In his later life he was also elected to the RHA. Coleman passed away in 1995.