Matthew O’Connor

I was born in 1950 in Rothsay on the Isle of Bute on the west coast of Scotland. My Father was an officer in the Royal Navy and our family moved frequently as my father was posted to various naval bases around the UK and Malta.

My family moved to Kenya when I was fifteen and it was there that I developed a life-long interest in drawing and natural history. Kenya was an ideal place - vast spaces and a great wealth of wildlife.

From there I moved to South Africa where I had a variety of jobs, none of them particulalry interesting, but all part of life's learning curve.

I left South Africa a few years later and went to Israel, where I spent the next two years fish-farming on a kibbutz in the Jordan Valley. It proved a life changing experience - a small country crammed with history and a surprisingly rich natural history; all this and having to deal with the constant threat of violent attack.

I returned to the UK and joined an off-shore survey company, spending the next twenty years working at sea world-wide. These were years rich with the experience of new countries and the ever changing moods of the sea.

This came to an abrupt halt when I was made redundant. I then decided to follow a life-long dream of becoming a professional artist. I entroled at the Moray School of Art in Elgin and draduated in May 2008 with a BA(Hons) in Fine Art. I am now a self-employed artist living in the coastal village of Findochty in the north east of Scotland.

During the past two years I have been focusing on interiors of Speyside's famous whisky distilleries a selection of which I exhibited at the Glenfiddich Gallery at the 2011 whisky festival & will be having another exhibition of this style of work in 2012 at Still Life Aberlour.

Matthew O'Connor

Commissions
Scotland, England, Kenya & Israel.

Work in collections worldwide