Paul Spellman examines the career and work of Peter Collis RHA who is exhibiting a collection of recent paintings at the Solomon Gallery from 11 November
The paintings of Peter Collis have been a mainstay of the Royal Hibernian Academy annual exhibitions over the last thirty years.¹ Within the discipline of representational landscape paintings, Collis has emerged as one of the most talented and individual of artists presently working in Ireland. This achievement is all the more remarkable when one considers that he began to paint the Irish landscape at a relatively advanced stage in his career. Born in London in 1929, Collis spent his early years in Guildford and later Esher in Surrey. He attended Epsom College of Art from 1947 to 1952 where he received a formal academic training in oil painting under the tutelage of the painters Ronald Benham and Bill Evans. During the 1950s Collis exhibited work at the Royal Academy Annual Exhibitions and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
The Lemon Street Gallery, in collaboration with RTÉ, are currently hosting an exhibition marking the fiftieth anniversary of the photography of Dublin by Nevill Johnson. For the first time a chronological account of Nevill Johnson’s artistic career is illustrated; mainly through photography, but also incorporating his painting and writing. The paintings range from the early 1940s to the ‘London’ paintings. The occasion also marks the launch of the Nevill Johnson Annual Award to assist emerging artists in the North and the South of Ireland, thereby acknowledging the influence of Belfast and Dublin on Nevill Johnson’s artistic development. At the height of his career as a painter Nevill Johnson turned to photography; Eoin O’Brien and Dickon Hall explain why