Terence P Flanagan, one of Ireland’s leading landscape painters, will today receive an honorary degree from the University of Ulster.The award will be conferred at a special ceremony hosted in the Ormeau Baths Gallery. He receives the accolade in recognition of his outstanding services to art becoming only the second ever recipient of the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Art (DFA).
TP Flanagan will also officially open an exhibition of his own work entitled Correspondences which brings together the themes of nostalgia, loss and the dignity of silence.Curated by Professor Liam Kelly, from the University of Ulster’s School of Art and Design, the exhibition is a touching and sensitive look at aspects of TP Flanagan’s vast career.
Born in Enniskillen in 1929, TP Flanagan studied painting and etching at the then Belfast College of Art from 1949 -1953 alongside fellow students such as Basil Blackshaw and Kenneth Jamison. In 1954 he was appointed onto the teaching staff of St Mary’s College of Education in Belfast and he continued to work in art education until his retirement in 1983.
He has also exhibited his distinctive landscape paintings all over Europe and his work is represented in numerous public, private and corporate collections including the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and the Ulster Museum, Belfast.
Professor Liam Kelly, from Ulster’s School of Art and Design, said: “In recent years there has been a new confidence in the visual arts in Ireland generally and particularly in the north of Ireland. That confidence has been built up incrementally by preceding generations of artists and cultural agencies as well as being ushered in by the cultural impact of the Troubles.
“TP Flanagan is an artist who has contributed to the incremental building up of that, by now more assertive, self belief in the art practices of our current generation of artists. “It is particularly fitting , as we recently celebrated the 160th anniversary of the School of Art and Design, that we should honour TP Flanagan for his outstanding contribution to the visual arts.”
Professor Ian Montgomery, Dean of the Faculty of Art Design and the Built Environment added: “The School of Art and Design is very proud that its strong tradition of producing high calibre visual artists in Ireland is marked in such a way as this honorary conferment to the artist TP Flanagan. The conferment within a gallery setting, is a novel yet appropriate way to celebrate the work of such a significant artist.” Correspondences – Selected Works by TP Flanagan runs at the Ormeau Baths Gallery until Saturday 17 July 2010.