Shane Berkery distils an array of imagery into his paintings, ranging from an archive of family photographs, documenting his Japanese-Irish heritage, to the stream of posts assailing him via social media feeds and the scenes seared into his mind after a recent trip to Kenya to attend his father’s wedding. Visual references are sampled, spliced and refracted through the prism of his very distinctive palette of Vandyke brown, white, ultramarine, cadmium yellow and permanent rose.
A first-class honours graduate of NCAD, Berkery was awarded the Hennessy Craig Scholarship and Whyte’s Award at the RHA Annual Exhibition in 2016, and the NUI Art and Design Award in 2015. He has also been selected twice for the Zurich Portrait Prize Exhibition (formerly the Hennessy Portrait Prize) at the National Gallery of Ireland.