LEE WELCH
Lee Welch is an artist who works in painting, drawing, and installation, but his true medium is the space between knowing and not knowing—the familiar made strange. His paintings are fragments of a dream you can’t quite place: figures and objects pared to their essence, hovering in a world both intimate and alien. Emerging from the shadows of art history, architecture, literature, and tennis, as well as his own private archive, Welch’s work distills, abstracts, and rebuilds, creating a visual language entirely his own. Figures appear in domestic scenes or leisure, their mundane actions charged with eerie resonance. They feel close yet distant, their flattened forms and muted textures like memories just out of reach. Welch’s paintings are not just seen; they are felt—a faint ache, a distant hum, lingering long after you’ve looked away.
All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun
The Coach House, Dublin Castle
02/14/2025 - 05/11/2025
“Welch’s portrait It’s an Interesting Question, depicting a thoughtful woman in a rocking chair, chooses the painting’s most vibrant colours for the sitter’s dress; her face, head and bare arms seem to be fading into inexistence, as though her corporeality has been leached away by the force of her introspection.”
-Tom Lordan
Read the full Irish Times review here
SELECTED ARTWORKS
Installation view, No feeling is final, Live Collision at Project Art Centre, Dublin, 2019
Boredom is an emptiness filled with insistence, 2024
acrylic on canvas
25.5 x 20.5 cm / 10 x 8.1 in
It’s an interesting question, 2024
acrylic on polyester
50.8 x 40.6 cm / 20 x 16 in
I will try to speak with more simple words, 2022
acrylic on polyester
68.5 x 51 cm / 27 x 20.1 in
At the beginning of Putin's invasion of Ukraine Russian tennis star Andrey Rublev shared a pointed message of peace after winning a semi-final match at the Dubai Tennis Championships where he could be seen writing "No war please" on a camera.
Novak Djokovic reading the NY Times, 2024
acrylic on linen
64.5 x 50 cm / 25.4 x 19.7 in
Sommeil hollywoodien, 2023
acrylic on canvas
50 x 40 cm / 19.7 x 15.7 in
Fog has covered everything night painting, 2024
acrylic on linen
108 x 80 cm / 42.5 x 31.5 in
IN PRAISE OF IDLENESS
Pallas Projects/Studios are pleased to present Lee Welch—In Praise of Idleness, the second exhibition of our 2024 Artist-Initiated Projects programme.
IN PRAISE OF IDLENESS
18 APRIL - 5 MAY 2024
PALLAS PROJECTS/STUDIOS
Public Exhibitions
MOMENTS OF BEING
Curated by Brenda McParland
A group exhibition exploring the diversity of approaches to painting by a selection of some of the most interesting Irish artists working today.
18 JANUARY - 15 MARCH 2025
SOLSTICE ARTS CENTRE
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HERE COMES LOVE
2023, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin
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like stars and years, like numerals
2021, Berlin Opticians Gallery, Dublin
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No feeling is final
2019, Live Collision at Project Art Centre, Dublin
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and the tide was way out
2019, dlr Lexicon, Dublin
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Attitude Precedes Form
2017, The Library Project, Dublin
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In the Silence of the Night
2015, IMMA, Dublin
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Sleepwalkers
2013, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane
News
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IMAGE Interiors Autumn/Winter 2022
Michelle Hanley highlights Lee Welch as an artist to watch.
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Arts Council
acquire harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! for its Collection
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Ultraviolet Art Talks
with Lee Welch
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192nd RHA Annual Exhibition
Royal Hibernian Academy, 23 May – 24 July
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ROPES
Issue 30 featuring Lee Welch on the cover
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The Stinging Fly
current issue featuring Lee Welch on the cover
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NCAD
Studio Artist 2020-21
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Irish Arts Review Winter 2023
Aidan Dunne considers the group show ‘Shifting in Silence’
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Artist's
News
Irish Times
Explore Welch's elusive portrait in Tom Lordan's review of 'All Flowers in Time' at Dublin Castle. –Read here
TN2 magazine
Interview with some Live Collision artists, Project Arts Centre, Dublin. –Read here
This is Tomorrow
This is Tomorrow contemporary art magazine has published a review by Aidan Kelly Murphy on Paul Hallahan and Lee Welch’s exhibition ‘and the tide was way out’, dlr Lexicon Gallery, Dublin. –Read here
Mousse Magazine
Lee Welch “Two exercises in awareness and observation” at the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin. –Read here
Books
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Sleepwalkers
PUBLISHER: Ridinghouse
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Amikejo
PUBLISHER: Mousse
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Options with Nostrils
PUBLISHER: Sternberg Press
Lee Welch was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1975 and currently lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. Welch creates gestural, atmospheric paintings that attest to the psychical and emotional depths of his chosen subjects and map out delicate negotiations between beauty, desire, and the painted image. Depicting figures from his own milieu, as well as from history, literature, music, and tennis, Welch finds feeling in that which he depicts, always rendered with the intensity of his particular humanism; a close looking akin to love. In each subject’s specificity, the artist reveals the universal feelings that connect us to each other, and that stretch from our present moment back through time.
Welch received his BFA from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in 2009 and his MFA from Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam in 2011. He has since been widely exhibited internationally and received numerous awards. Recent exhibitions have taken place at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University; Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), León, Spain; Glucksman Gallery, Cork; Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. His paintings are in private and public collections such as the Arts Council, Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane and the OPW - State Art Collection.
with support from the Arts Council of Ireland and dlr County Council