OCG artist Eoin Mac Lochlainn wins prestigious award at RHA 196th annual show

The Olivier Cornet Gallery is delighted to announce that its artist Eoin Mac Lochlainn has just won the Friends of the RHA Award for a Senior Artist at the academy’s 196th annual exhibition.

This award is a great tribute to the artist whom we have been representing since 2014. The work for which the award was granted is titled 'An ghaoth aniar / eroded fence post no.1' (watercolour on birch panel, archival fixative, 45x30cm). Never shown before, this work is part of a series which the artist exhibited at our gallery in September 2025. The exhibition was titled An ghaoth aniar / This too will pass and was opened by TD Catherine Connolly, now President of Ireland.

Eoin Mac Lochlainn is already the recipient of The Golden Fleece Award (2008) and the ESB Keating McLaughlin Award (2010). He  was also shortlisted for the Davy Portrait Award in 2010. His work is in many private collections as well as AIB, Air Lease Corporation, Bank of Ireland, OPW, Revenue Commissioners, AXA Insurance, Foras na Gaeilge, Gael Linn, Imago Mundi (the Luciano Benetton Collection), Contemporary Irish Art Society/CIAS (permanent loan to the National College of Ireland), Pearse Museum, The Boyle Civic Collection, The Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame (USA), Wesley College, University of Limerick, Donegal County Council, Cló Ceardlann na gCnoc.

The "Friends of the RHA Award" is a prestigious visual arts prize presented annually at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA)'s Annual Exhibition in Dublin. The award specifically honors artistic achievement, often recognizing an outstanding senior artist for a work in any medium across Ireland's largest open-submission.

Huge congratulations to the artist. A well deserved accolade.

Photo: The artist at the RHA with his award-winning painting as shown in the academy's 196th annual show.