Dougal McKenzie

Overview

Dougal has been at Ulster University since 2011, as a Lecturer in Painting within both the BA Fine Art and MFA programmes. He was a course co-director for the BA programme from 2015-19 and also from 2021-23. PhD supervision responsibilities have seen the successful completion of theses by Dr Susan Connolly (2019) and Dr David Haughey (2021).

A co-director in the early years of the Belfast artist-run organisation Catalyst Arts from 1994-96, Dougal went on to become a Lecturer in Painting at Limerick School of Art and Design, from 1997-2004. From 2004-2011 he worked across the National Diploma, Foundation and HND courses at SRC Newry and Armagh. He has been a studio member at Queen Street Studios, Orchid Studios and PSSquared Studios in Belfast.

Dougal has been a prize winner at the Liverpool John Moores Painting Exhibition in 2004, was selected for the John Moores Retrospective in Seongnam, South Korea in 2010, and was an exhibitor again at the John Moores, Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, 2012. Notable Belfast exhibitions have been The MAC International 2014, and a solo exhibition ‘A Dream and an Argument’ also at The MAC, in 2017. He was represented by the third space gallery in Belfast from 2008-2012.

In 2006, he curated ‘The Double Image’, part of the Golden Thread Gallery’s Collective Histories of Northern Ireland exhibition series. In 2023 he was invited to co-curate "New Exits, 10 Years of Painting Shows" at The MAC, which showcased 11 past graduates of the Degree and MFA courses at Belfast School of Art.

Dougal's research interests focus mainly on the relationships between painting, film and performance, and in 2024 he participated in the Belfast International Festival of Performance Art.