Hughie O'Donoghue

Hughie O'Donoghue RA (born 1953) is a British painter.

Hughie O'Donoghue was born in 1953 in Manchester, England. His father, Daniel O'Donoghue, was also born in Manchester, to Irish parents, and was a railway company clerk in the city. Daniel O'Donoghue encouraged his son to study history and literature and spend time in Manchester City Art Gallery. This was to prove a key element in the formation of O'Donoghue's desire to make art.

Equally significant was O'Donoghue mother, who had been born in Ireland, in the Gaeltacht of County Mayo. O'Donoghue spent much of his childhood here, learning traditional stories and experiencing the landscape around his mother's family home.

O'Donoghue gained an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 1982 and was appointed to be artist-in-residence at the Drax power station near Selby in Yorkshire in 1983. This was followed in 1984 by a two-year residency at the National Gallery in London, and by another art residency in 2000 at St John's College, Oxford.

His first solo exhibition was in 1984 at AIR Gallery, London. He then showed in 1987 at the Galleria Carini and Donatini, Florence, Italy, followed by the solo show Fires at the Fabian Carlsson Gallery, London in 1989.

In 1997 he held a solo show at the Haus der Kunst, Munich. In 1998 he staged an exhibition of his paintings and drawings of the human body, made between 1984 and 1998, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. In 1999 he had further solo shows in Dublin and Munich. In 2000 he took part in the group show Geschichte und Erinnerung in der Kunst der Gegenwart (History and Memory in Contemporary Art) at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, and then had further solo shows at the Purdy Hicks Gallery, London, in 1998, 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2006. In 2003 O'Donoghue exhibited at the Imperial War Museum North in Salford a series of works called Painting Caserta Red charting his father's experiences in the Second World War. Also in 2003 he held a solo show at the Gas Hall Gallery, Birmingham, then at the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, Ireland, in 2004, the Fenton Gallery, Cork, in 2005, the City and Áras Éanna Arts Centre, Inis Oírr, Ireland, and Fairgreen Gallery, Galway, Ireland, in 2006 and Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin, in 2007.

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