Sligo artist Nick Miller shortlisted for National Gallery’s competition

A SLIGO artist has been shortlisted for this year’s Zurich Portrait Prize at the National Gallery of Ireland. From hundreds of entries, 24 artists made it through to the final stage of the Zurich Portrait Prize, while 20 young artists aged between five and 18 years old have been shortlisted for the Zurich Young Portrait Prize.

Among the artists shortlisted for the portrait prize is Nick Miller, whose work, Portrait of Patrick Hall, will be on display at the National Gallery later this year. Nick Miller was born in London in 1962, graduating in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia. He moved to Ireland in 1984 to pursue painting, working first in

Co. Clare and then in Dublin. Since 1992, he has been largely based in County Sligo.

Elected as a member of Aosdána in 2001 in recognition of his contribution to arts in Ireland, he was the recipient of the inaugural 2014 Hennessy Portrait Award at the National Gallery of Ireland.

He has exhibited widely including solo shows at The Irish Museum of Modern Art, the RHA and the New York Studio School. In 2017 he was guest curator of the RDS Visual Arts Awards exhibition in Dublin. The winner of the Zurich Portrait Prize will receive a cash prize of €15,000 and will be commissioned to create a work for the national portrait collection, for which they will be awarded a further €5,000.

Two additional awards of €1,500 will be given to highly commended works.

The Zurich Young Portrait Prize returns for its third year in 2021. Five winners (one from each age category and an overall winner) will be selected from a shortlist of hundreds of entries by children and young people aged up to 18 from across the island of Ireland. Exhibitions of shortlisted works in both competitions run at the National Gallery of Ireland between November 13, 2021, and April 3, 2022. The exhibition will travel to Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, where it will be displayed between April 23 and July 17, 2022.