Selena Mowat is a Scottish born artist who lived in Donegal from 2010 until 2014. After visiting the county briefly in 2009 she immediately fell in love with its ‘timeless charm and character’, inspired not only to its diverse and captivating terrain which has attracted so many artists before her but by its preserved culture and welcoming spirit of the community. A former lecturer in Drawing and Painting at Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee University where she graduated in 2002, Selena has exhibited extensively throughout Scotland, the UK and Europe and was the Irish Winner of Sky Arts Portrait Artist Of The Year broadcast on television in 2013. When living in Donegal Selena immersed herself in the local artists community founding a local art zine ZWEEF and co-founding local artists collective AVANT GARDA, which in 2013 participated in a Culture Ireland funded residency in Aix de Provence, France. Although working primarily with oil paint, Selena is an adamant supporter of working collaboratively within the community with film-makers, musicians and performers and has produced a number of films, music projects and events outside of her professional painting practise.

For her first comeback show in Ireland after living in Germany for the last 4 years, Selena will be exploring utopian ideals through her work as a painter and as a collaborative artist. Having being born in Scotland and travelling extensively throughout her childhood Selena’s approach to making art is to act as a kind of conduit of information, gathering memorabilia (photographs, postcards, folktales, album covers, magazine clippings) in much the same way as she would have absorbed the world whilst travelling in her youth. Work for the show will include large scale paintings produced this year in Ireland and Germany where the artist will spend time retracing her common theme of identity in relation to environment.