Paul Hallahan, born in Ireland, works out of Fire Station Studios in Dublin. His work circles back to the same questions, always: nature and our place within it, the struggle to see clearly, to hold steady. He paints, mostly, though sometimes he sculpts, and every so often, he turns to video. These forms, in their own way, feel like meditations, attempts to make sense of something larger than himself. He has said before that art is what we leave behind, the traces of us that linger when we’re gone. Perhaps it’s the only thing nature will make of us in the end.
His paintings emerge slowly, layer by layer, each one fine and deliberate, each one holding or catching the light. They shift as you look, changing with the hour, with the eye, refusing to stay still. This, he believes, is their purpose—to unsettle, to draw you in and then draw you deeper, beyond the surface, into something quieter, something less certain.
The videos are simpler, yet just as complex. A single perspective, an idea stretched out and left to blur at the edges. It’s the blur, he says, that holds the truth. Or, if not the truth, then something close to it. The unclear, the unfocused—this is where meaning lies, waiting for someone patient enough to look.
In 2009, with Waterford City Council, he co-founded Soma Contemporary, a gallery that gave space to artists and ideas, holding steady until 2012. Since then, his work has travelled, appearing in galleries and shows across Ireland. Hang Tough Contemporary, The Complex, The Lab, and the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin; Berlin Opticians Gallery and Roscommon Arts Centre; and a two-person exhibition that moved from Lexicon Gallery in Dublin to Garter Lane in Waterford, Sternview in Cork, and Platform Arts in Belfast.
His efforts have been recognised. In 2018, he won the Golden Fleece Award, a quiet testament to the care and patience in his practice. His paintings have found homes in public and private collections—The Arts Council, Trinity College Dublin, and the Office of Public Works among them. They rest now in spaces where the light catches them, where they shift and shimmer and refuse to stay still.
