Mathew Coll

Matthew Coll is an Irish artist based in Dublin. He graduated from NCAD’s Fine Art Painting BA in 2022 and works predominantly in painting, sculpture and installation. His work is part of several private and public collections, including the Office of Public Works, St Vincent’s University Hospital and Teeling Whiskey Distillery. He has received several awards, including NCAD's Clancy Quay Studio Graduate Residency Award 2023/2024, the Arts Council’s Agility Award 2023 and Fingal County Council's Artists’ Support Scheme Bursaries 2023 & 2025.

His current work focuses on the subject matter of crowds, exploring the influence between the collective and the individual, how shared energies of bliss or discontent become channelled into constructive and destructive forces. Utilising found imagery and photography from daily life as a starting point for source imagery. Painting actual and imagined gatherings, ranging from joyous raves to turbulent riots, aiming to depict a reality slipping away, where Real and Unreal become indistinguishable. Distorting the origin of the image through the painting process, often dragging, sanding, scraping and pouring paint across the surface and occasionally deconstructing structural components, pursuing a simultaneous harmony and conflict between points of representation and abstraction. Whilst frequently working on found or discarded materials as the painting surface.

Instagram: @matthewcoll.art