John Cooney is an artist living in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, and he was born in Newry, Co. Down. He went to art college in Belfast and Manchester, achieving a first class honours degree in illustration. While at college, he won first prize at the North West Artists exhibition sponsored by BP.
After college he began exhibiting with Tom Caldwell Galleries and won awards at the Royal Ulster Academy. Despite his sucess in painting, he began working in advertising which left no time for painting. After further career moves in graphic design, he began teaching art classes and in local primary schools. He has now stopped teaching to devote himself entirely to painting.
“I paint ordinary people in their environments and always try to make the commonplace interesting.”
He paints in both oil and watercolours and has no prefrence. His work has been featured in The Artist and Artists and Illustrators magazine. He has exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters at the Mall Galleries, London. He won the watercolour prize at the Royal Ulster Academy in 2017 and won the Whyte’s auctioneers prize at the Watercolour Society of Ireland exhibition in Dublin. He was also awarded second prize at the Artist of the Year exhibition at the Mall Galleries.