Born in Callan, Co Kilkenny, Tony O’Malley (1913-2003) was until the late 1950s a part-time artist working, from 1934 to 1958, with the Munster and Leinster Bank. In 1960 O’Malley moved to St Ives in Cornwall, which he had already visited on a number of occasions and where he was to live for the next 30 years. He returned to Kilkenny in 1990. His paintings are concerned with the landscape, and the spirit of personal and folk history which it embodies. The first exhibition of O’Malley’s work at IMMA was held in 1992, a further exhibition was held in 2001, and a major retrospective in 2005. O’Malley was made a Saoi of Aosdána in 1993.