Tony O'Malley HRHA
1913-2003

Tony O’Malley was born in Co. Kilkenny in 1913.  He worked as a bank clerk for many years, but after a long illness retired from the bank and began, in his forties, to pursue a long-desired career as a painter.  For the next thirty years he lived in Cornwall, making many trips to the Isles of Scilly and the Bahamas.  Entirely self-taught, particularly in the earlier years when he was cut off from outside artistic influences, O’Malley was obliged to invent his own visual language and to develop an independence of spirit - impulses to which he has always remained true. 

He exhibited extensively over the years and some of his most recent exhibitions included the RHA Banquet Exhibition, Dublin (1993), Taylor Galleries, Dublin (1990, 1991, 1993, 1996) and the Coram Gallery, London (1996).  He was elected Saoi by Aosdána in 1993 and was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin in 1994.  Selected collections include AIB Bank (Dublin, London, New York), Bank of Ireland, Kilkenny Corporation, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, Office of Public Works, Irish Museum of Modern Art, University College Cork, KPMG, Dublin.