Top award for Mornington artist Gillian
RENOWNED local artist Gillian Cullen has been named as this year’s recipient of the Tyrone Guthrie Residency Award at the Royal Ulster Academy’s Annual Exhibition.
Gillian won the award for her drawing ‘Healing’ and there was double reason to celebrate for the artist as her second piece in the exhibition, the stunning ‘Beaulieu Wood’, sold on the opening night.
Gillian told the Drogheda Independent: ‘I am so delighted to be this years recipient of The Tyrone Guthrie Residency Award, from the Royal Ulster Academy. Just to have my work selected for an exhibition such as this is honour enough. It’s wonderful to be a part of such an eclectic, talented group of artists.
.I’m really looking forward to spending some time in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre to work on some new projects and meet some new people.’
The award winning artist specialises in detailed pencil portraits of people and pets, capturing the individual personality of each person or animal in every drawing.
Her hugely skilled and detailed pieces are so good you could be forgiven for mistaking them for photographs.
A graduate of Environmental Science at Trinity College, Dublin, she has a deep respect for the natural environment and draws inspiration from all elements of nature and this love of nature is a recurring theme in her work. Gillian has taken part in numerous exhibitions, including the annual exhibitions in the Royal Hibernian Academy and the Royal Ulster Academy. She was also a finalist for the Zurich Portrait Prize in 2018. In 2016 she was awarded the Prize for Drawing and the Rowel Friers prize, by the RUA. She has completed numerous commissioned portraits and drawings, and her work features in many private and public collections.