Eddie Kennedy was born in Thurles, County Tipperary, in 1960. He graduated from Limerick School of Art and Design in 1983 with distinction and received his Masters in Fine Art at the University of Cincinnati in 1989. Having spent some years painting in New York and working with US artist Ron Gorchov, he now lives and works in Dublin and Mayo. In 2017 he received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award and was elected to membership of Aosdána.

“There is always a surprise in Eddie’s paintings, but the surprise is never provocative as much as it is evocative. Meaning is everywhere and in everything. It is the range of emotion and spirit that so impresses. His vocabulary of mark and surface, light and colour is so established by now. He has reached a high plateau in his most recent work and the views are stunning.” 
Randall L. Exon

“I stand with Theseus to one side of me, Ariadne to the other, and we enjoy a speaking silence as we look on these paintings. Theseus admires the forcefulness of the work, the vigorous brush strokes, the deft use of the knife, the unleashing of energies and their containment. Ariadne sees what the painter is up to, how he’s figured his way outward and upward from previous work; how he’s tried now this, now that, as he battles forward, how he returns to the starting place, starts out again; how all those windings of thread are remembered and scored in the paintings themselves.”

Theo Dorgan