About the artist:

Robert Ballagh is an Irish artist, painter and designer. Born in suburban Dublin, Ballagh's initial painting style was strongly influenced by pop art. He is also known for his hyperrealistic renderings of Irish literary, historical and establishment figures,[4] or designing more than 70 Irish postage stamps and a series of banknotes, and for work on theatrical sets, including for works by Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde, and for Riverdance in multiple locations. Ballagh's work has been exhibited at many solo and group shows since 1967, in Dublin, Cork, Brussels, Moscow, Sofia, Florence, Lund and others, as well as touring in Ireland and the US. His work is held in a range of museum and gallery collections. He was chosen to represent Ireland at the 1969 Biennale de Paris.

A lifelong resident of Dublin, he was made a member of Ireland's academy of artists, Aosdána He became the founding chairperson of the Irish Visual Artists Rights Organisation. He has received a number of awards, including an honorary doctorate from UCD. He has published a book of photography of Dublin, and a volume of memoirs.