Categories: LivingCulture

My Life in Culture: Artist and musician Brian McDonagh


by Sarah Finnan
12th Mar 2025

The most recent artist in residence at Dublin’s The Doorway Gallery, Brian McDonagh is a talented painter with a passion for local culture. He’s also one of the founding members of Irish trad group, Dervish, who are currently on tour and who previously represented Ireland in the Eurovision. Inspired by his love of music, many of his paintings get their titles from Irish songs and are charged with an underlying melancholy or a longing to unwind the ever ticking clock.

The last thing I saw and loved… Marina Abramovic’s Artist is Present at MOMA was very impressive. The Sligo Wave at the Model last year also had some great work from Sligo’s best.

The book I keep coming back to is… Ulysses. 

I find inspiration in… Irish culture, the Irish landscape, Irish music and song, Jack B Yeats, Sean Mc Sweeney, Basil Blackshaw, Patrick Collins and Hughie O’Donoghue.

My favourite film is… I am a sucker for sci-fi movies like Terminator, Alien or Blade Runner. Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival was great! I also like low-budget productions like Primer and The Artifice Girl.

My career highlight is… performing with Dervish at the biggest rock festival in the world, Rock in Rio, or getting to visit the Atlas experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, perhaps the most iconic building of this century — thanks to Timo and Lori.

The song I listen to to get in the zone is… ‘Rip the Calico,’The Maid of Coolmore’ by the Bothy Band or ‘There There’ by Radiohead.