Biography

Una Sealy is a graduate of Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design (now IADT), in Fine Art, Painting 1980, and UCD (Higher Diploma in Arts Administration, 1989). She completed a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Anatomy for Artists at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, (RCSI, 2020). She was elected an Associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2010, and a full Member in 2016.

Una Sealy has been a major contributor to the arts in Ireland over her forty five year career to date. As well as her distinguished output as a figurative painter, she has had a key role in many areas of community arts, education, activism through creativity, curation, and EDI (equality, diversity, inclusion) promotion.She has had eleven solo exhibitions, including Molesworth Gallery, Dublin (2006, 2003), Ashford Gallery, RHA (2016, 2000), and Lavit Gallery, Cork (2018), and is currently working towards a major solo review exhibition at the RHA in November 2026, featuring key pieces from the last ten years as well as new work focussing on the people and places of Dublin’s Northside.Her work has chronicled and recorded the everyday lives of people for many years, mostly based around the North Dublin suburbs where she is based. She has explored this theme consistently for most of her career, and is a singular artistic voice in this realm. Family and friends feature, as well as people just passing through. Domestic interiors and the built environment play important support roles in the various narratives. Sealy sees the work as recording in paint a social history of a place and time.She is also well known as a portraitist, and has been awarded many commissions, including NUI Galway, Dublin City University, University of Limerick, Waterford County Council. Her work is also held in many other public collections including Office of Public Works, Fingal County Council, Royal College of Surgeons, Boyle Civic Collection, Little Museum of Dublin, National Self Portrait Collection and the Great Book Of Ireland. She has won many awards, including the John Richardson French Residency (RUA 2024), Tyrone Guthrie Centre/Bealtaine/Fingal Residency (2022), Fingal County Council Bursary (2023, 2018), the Irish Arts Review/Ireland-US Council prize for Outstanding Portraiture (2011), Her latest major project was NEST, (2024), a significant visual arts and theatre project for Draiocht Arts Centre, Blanchardstown, which told the stories of 33 young people growing up in Dublin 15, funded by the Arts Council under the Decade of Centenaries programme.She was one of ten artists selected to represent Ireland in China in 2019 to celebrate 40 years of Irish-Chinese diplomatic relations, in association with Dept. of Foreign Affairs.

As well as her career as a painter, Sealy has played a key role in promoting arts and artists in Ireland through her work with the RHA (Secretary 2018 – 2023), An Post’s Stamp Design Advisory Committee where she champions the use of contemporary artists’ work, Board Member of the National Gallery, (2019 – 2021) where she advocated for EDI, payment for artists, and gender balance in acquisitions.She was a major contributor to community arts and outreach programmes during her time as Manager of the Grapevine/City Arts Centre, Dublin, (1985 – 1991).She is a tutor in drawing, painting and Anatomy at the RHA School (accredited by TU Dublin) 3rd level courses, and is a former lecturer in painting at IADT (1991 – 1996).She was Judge on both seasons of RTE’s Painting the Nation (2016, 2017), and guest artist on This is Art Club (2024). She is a former judge on the RDS Visual Arts Awards, (2020 – 2021).She is a full Member of the RHA, a Fellow of Ballinglen Arts Foundation, and was invited Artist in Residence at the National Gallery of Ireland in 2018.

Sealy was the first person in Ireland to undertake a Masters of Science in Anatomy for Artists at the Royal College of Surgeons (RCSI, 2020). Her research devised a programme in which Artists could access the fundamental aspects of human structures to inform their own work. In 2021 she was elected to be the inaugural Professor of Art at the RCSI, the first medical school in Ireland to create such a position.