Letterkenny student PJ Doherty has reached another milestone in his art career with a display in the National Gallery of Ireland.
PJ, a 6th year student at St. Eunan’s College, is shortlisted for the Zurich Young Portrait Prize 2022. All shortlisted pieces feature in an exhibition which opened on Saturday 26th November.
PJ’s excellent self-portrait ‘Focus’ was created using coloured pencils on paper.
“Art has always been my passion and I have been drawing for as long as I can remember,” he told Donegal Daily.
“This is my creative outlet and I hope that art will continue to play a role in my life in the future.”
“While there is a sense of chaos and disorientation conveyed through the vibrant colours and various fragmented layers of faces, the expression is transparent, losing ‘focus’ and drifting elsewhere in a moment of daydream,” he added.
PJ was also crowned overall winner of the 67th Texaco Children’s Art Competition in 2021.
The Zurich Young Portrait Prize returns for its fourth year in 2022. Five winners (one from each respective age category and an overall winner) will be selected from a shortlist of hundreds of entries from young people aged four to 18 from across the island of Ireland. Winners will receive a bespoke art box and a cash prize. The overall competition winner will be awarded a wooden box of high-quality art materials, and a cash prize of €500. All twenty shortlisted entrants will have their artwork professionally framed and prepared for display. This year’s Zurich Young Portrait Prize judges are: Janet McLean, Curator of Modern Art, National Gallery of Ireland; Nick Roche, comic illustrator; and Una Sealy RHA, artist.
Exhibitions of shortlisted works in both competitions run at the National Gallery of Ireland between 26 November 2022 and 2 April 2023. The exhibition will then travel to the Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, where it will be displayed between 3 June and 2 September 2023.
