Niki Purcell — Irish Landscape & Seascape Painter
Niki Purcell is an Irish oil painter based on the Wicklow/Wexford border, known for contemporary landscape and seascape paintings that capture the light, weather and coastline of the east of Ireland. She graduated from the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) with an honours degree in Fine Art in 1995 and has worked as a professional painter ever since.
Her work has been shown at the Hugh Lane Gallery, the Douglas Hyde Gallery, the RHA Gallery and the Guinness Hopstore, and is held in a number of important collections, including the Office of Public Works (OPW). In 2023 she designed an original paint colour, “Rolling Harvest,” for Curator, the artist-led paint range from Colour Trend Paints. Check out my Q&A Section
A painter of light, wind and coastline
Niki grew up beside the sea in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, with the Sugarloaf, Bray Head and the Wicklow Mountains in view — the same landscape that still shapes her work today. She now lives and paints from an old coastguard station on the Wicklow/Wexford border, where her studio window looks straight out over the coast she paints.
Her paintings aren’t attempts at objective, photographic reality. They’re a response to how a place feels in a particular moment of light and weather — wind moving through trees, restless cloudscapes racing across the sky, or the total stillness of a calm summer’s day. She’s drawn to the changeable relationship between light, wind, sea and land, and to how the same ordinary view can look completely different an hour later.
How she works
Niki paints in oils on board, canvas and wooden panel, working on several paintings at once to keep her eye fresh and her work full of energy. Ideas usually start outdoors — a quick sketch made on a cliff walk, a mental note of a particular cloud or quality of light, or a photograph — before being developed into a finished painting in the studio. She also paints outdoors, on location, when the work calls for it.
Read more about her materials and technique, her process from sketch to finished painting, and her training and exhibition history.
Commissions
Niki takes on landscape and seascape commissions. Get in touch to discuss a piece.