Kevin McAleenan is an Irish visual artist originally from Banbridge, County Down. He holds a BA in Art and Design from Ulster University and began his career as one of Northern Ireland’s leading commercial illustrators, working in advertising and publishing for fifteen years before transitioning to fine art full-time.

McAleenan’s paintings respond to Ireland and beyond through carefully structured blocks of colour, shifting fluidly between realism and abstraction. His work explores the space between memory and perception, and over the past 25 years he has developed a distinctive visual language defined by vertical lines and interlocking colour relationships that give his paintings rhythm and movement.

He has exhibited consistently in selected galleries across Ireland and internationally, including at major art fairs, and has held retrospectives such as Equal at The Market Place Theatre & Arts Centre in Armagh. McAleenan has also completed significant commissions, including large-scale depictions of Belfast for The Dead Rabbit bar in Austin, Texas. His work is held in public collections including the Office of Public Works, The Open University and Queen’s University Belfast, as well as in private collections across Europe, Asia and the United States. 

In 2024, McAleenan had a sell-out exhibition here in the gallery. In 2025, he had a major retrospective, ‘Equal’ in Armagh. He will also be having a solo show with us this coming April, 2026.