05/07/2026
John Sheehy, who lives and works in London, began painting at the age of 51 and over the past 18 years has produced an expansive body of work that includes printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, playwriting, poetry and music. While formally, Sheehy’s paintings range between portraits, landscapes and the purely abstract, they most often foreground personal or biographical recollections, evoking the artist’s travels and his native Ireland.
Sheehy has described the physical act of making as central to his practice, underlined by the accelerated pace at which he produces work. Even the artist’s most complex and ambitious paintings take under an hour to complete, and Sheehy is often only limited by the availability of materials to hand, from canvas and paper to roof tiles, furniture and found objects. Single subjects may be rendered again and again over a period of weeks or months, with an energy that suggests the artist’s urgent need to capture or perhaps, expel these images. Importantly, while Sheehy’s practice comprises thousands of images and words, he considers it to be a single and total narrative.
Text by Studio Voltaire, from their 2017 exhibition of John Sheehy's work.
John Sheehy
Self Portrait with Windows, 2025
Acrylic on paper
70 x 50 cm
Sheehy was long listed for the 2025 Self Portrait Prize
