The title of Tom McLean’s exhibition at the Chimera Gallery, ‘Subtly Surreal’, is in reference to a comment made about the subtly surreal nature of his paintings. While painting in his studio through lockdown, he transformed the experience into art. A figurative painter, McLean graduated from CCAM Galway in 2016. The same year he made it onto the shortlist of the Hennessy Portrait Prize. In 2018, he was featured in the Irish Arts Review’s ‘8 under 40 – painters to watch’, where he polled the favourite, and he also won the Whyte’s Award at the RHA Annual Exhibition. In 2019, McLean won the Screaming Pope Prize at the K-FEST in Kerry.
Tom McLean: 5 – 25 September
