BANKING ON HER ART
AFTER a successful career in financial services, Gill O’Shea has returned to the subject she studied in college and is now a watercolour painter.
The artist has an exhibition entitled ‘Blush’ in the Pigyard Gallery in Selskar, Wexford which was officially opened by the Fine Gael councillor Michael D’Arcy and will continue until this coming Saturday, April 29. The focus of Gill’s exhibition is animals, both domestic and wild in a celebration of vivid colour.
Gill is a Castledermot, County Kildare native who graduated with a first class honours degree in Fine Art from DIT in 2005 and immediately took up a role as a junior administrator in a life and pensions outsourcer in Dublin to earn some money while considering her next step.
She gradually drifted away from art and forged a career in finance, qualifying as an ACCA accountant in 2011. During this period, she worked in a number of senior roles in Ernst and Young and PTSB, most recently leading the €500m re-IPO and then heading up the mortgage tracker examination for PTSB.
In recent years, she got the itch to go back to art and started watercolour painting. Encouraged by friends and family to share her work, she created the website ‘Dabble in Art’.
Late last year while considering a change to another senior role in the bank, she decided to make a bold move and left financial services altogether to forge a full-time careeer in art.
Gill said her mission is to sell her work all over the world and to help promite Irish art by combining her business acumen with her artistic talents.
She is currently showing her work in a number of Irish commercial galleries across the country and working on a number of fine art projects.