Sean Fingleton was born in Malin in County Donegal. He studied at University College, Dublin where he received a BA in English and Philosophy and a H.Dip in Higher Education. He also studied art at Letterkenny RTC (now LYIT) and briefly at the National College of Art and Design.

His work forms part of the collections of the Arts Council, IMMA, Aras an Uachtarain, the OPW, the Royal Hospital in Gloucester in England and the European Parliament in Strasbourg among others. He has exhibited widely throughout Ireland and abroad.

He has been the recipient of many prizes for his work, including a 1986 GPA Award, in 1993 The Fergus O'Ryan RHA Award and has been twice a prize-winner at the annual Claremorris Open Exhibition.

Among other collections which include Fingleton's work are Aer Rianta, Allied Irish Banks, Bank of Ireland, GPA Group, Jurys Hotel Limerick University College Dublin, the Royal Hospital Gloucester UK and St. Vincent's Hospital Dublin.

Fingelton is also a member of Aosdana, which was established by the Arts Council in 1981 to honour those artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the Arts in Ireland.


ARTIST’S STATEMENT

In my method of painting, I eschew outline for the most part, for an emotionally charged sense of colour and form, a shorthand of sensation, executed in broad strokes of palette knife and brush, registering the essence of what I see.

The painting process is organic, open to improvisation and change, involving risk taking. There is often erasing, destroying, repainting, in waves of energy, as if driven by a wind from the unconscious.

While much of my painting is done en plein air and as much as I admire Impressionism, my painting is not of that ilk. While Impressionism is concerned with putting down what is there, in my own painting, an inner and outer world coagulate in the paint. I am concerned with essences and strike a chord in my imagination.

The paintings when realised sometimes appear to me mysterious – as if they always existed – where the metaphor of what is seen, seems like archetype, something old and universal, confronting me with the mystery of being human.