Portrait of gallerist Olivier Cornet by Eoin Mac Lochlainn

A portrait of gallerist Olivier Cornet by Eoin Mac Lochlainn

Portrait of gallerist Olivier Cornet by Eoin Mac Lochlainn

Eoin MacLochlainn, who graduated from NCAD in 2000, is the subject of an exhibition at Olivier Cornet’s new gallery. He has previously won the Golden Fleece award in 2008, and in 2010 was both shortlisted for the Davy Portrait Award, and won the ESB Keating McLaughlin Award. Portraits, although they are not in the upcoming exhibition, are a regular feature of his work. In his studio there was a beautifully painted and extremely clever study of his gallerist, Mr Cornet, which was a diptych. The left side depicted the head in huge close-up, cut off at the top of the forehead; the right side, smaller and narrower than the left, showed us a full-length study of the man, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his gallery. Whereas the image on the right had a gentle other worldly quality, as if its subject had drifted off into a pleasant daydream, the left hand image, with its dramatic scale and its revelation of every line and furrow in the skin, had a stark brooding intensity, so that the juxtaposition of the two images created a yin-and-yang dialogue. This is a portrait waiting to win an award.” 

Extract from Brian McAvera’s review of the artist’s ‘Diaspora’ series of works, Irish Arts Review Magazine, Autumn 2015. The portrait can be viewed at the Olivier Cornet Gallery, alongside some of Eoin’s paintings from his Diaspora show (which took place at the gallery in September 2015)
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