Tony O'Malley (1913-2003)

Tony O’Malley is a highly respected and much-loved artist and a ‘Freeman of the City’ of Kilkenny. Self-taught, his artistic career took off in 1960 when a disability pension enabled him to retire from work as a bank official. This was the start of a most prolific career.

Tony met the Canadian painter Jane Harris in St Ive’s in Cornwall in 1970 and they married in 1973. Regular visits to the Scilly Isles, the Bahamas, St. Lucia and to Lanzarote inspired a range of colour and lush brushwork which married well with his observations of medieval and contemporary Kilkenny. Perhaps because he was self-taught O’Malley was remarkably open to experimenting with new forms of expression and the use of unusual materials.

While he found recognition among his peers during his thirty years among the artistic community of St Ives, Cornwall in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the serious attention he deserved only came to him following his return to Ireland. In 1990, he settled in Physicianstown in Callan, Co Kilkenny with his wife Jane, and lived and worked there until his death at the age of eighty-nine in 2003.