Moate artist wins prestigious international art accolade

A Moate-based artist will travel to the majestic Italian city of Florence next month to collect a prestigious art award from two of Europe's leading art curators.

Carmel Rooney, who operates her own shop and art studio on Castle Street in Athlone, is set to receive the award for “International Artist of the Year 2025' from Dr Francesco Saverio Russo and Dr. Salvatore Russo, renowned art curators, writers and art organisers.

The awards ceremony will take place in Palazzo Pucci in the heart of Florence on January 25 next, and as well as picking up her prestigious award, the local artist will also have a page dedicated to her work featured in a new art magazine 'Master Artist to Collect, Vol 1, 2025'.

A delighted Carmel Rooney admitted that she filled out an online application for the artist of the year award back in June of this year and “promptly forgot all about it” until she received an email about two weeks ago informing her of her success and inviting her to the awards ceremony in January.

“I entered the competition but to be honest I said to myself that I hadn't a hope, so I didn't write down anything to remind me of the fact that I had entered in the first place” she says “so you can imagine my surprise and shock when I got an email to tell me I had been awarded the artist of the year.”

While she has “no clue” who she will invite to accompany her to Florence for the award ceremony, cocktail party and photoshoot Carmel Rooney says it still hasn't sunk in that her artistic endeavours have been recognised on such a renowned international stage. “I still can't believe it” she honestly admits.

Having been to Florence previously on various art trips, Carmel says it is “a spectacular city” with a storied history of dedication to the arts, so she is “particularly honoured” to be collecting her art award in such a renowned setting.

Carmel Rooney's artistic journey began more than 40 years ago when she travelled from her native Navan to study graphic design in what was then known as Athlone Institute of Technology.

She settled in Moate, having married a local man, and had two children, Jordan and her late daughter, Jasmine, who was born with cystic fibrosis and passed away at the tender age of 10 years old in 2002.

In what she describes as “an ironic twist of fate” the presentation of Carmel Rooney's art award in Florence will take place one day prior to her precious daughter's anniversary. Her mother firmly believes this is a sign that her only daughter is always with her.

Four years after the passing of her daughter, Carmel Rooney returned to education and completed a BA in Fine Arts at Galway Mayo Institute of Technology. She began working with Westmeath County Council on their active age programmes and started teaching art classes to various groups of older people in Athlone and Mullingar, and also in local nursing homes.

She is a registered art teacher with the Teaching Council of Ireland and also teaches private art classes to adults and children.

Having experimented with a number of painting techniques over the years, Carmel is best known for the raised painting technique known as ‘impasto.’ The Italian word, which translates as ‘mixture’, is used to describe a layered painting technique where paint is thickly laid on a surface, so that brushstrokes or palette knife marks are clearly visible.

She uses a palette knife to paint thick strokes on canvas, which gives her finished paintings “a 3D effect” and her artistic creations are proving very popular with customers both at home and abroad.

After many years of working hard to establish her own unique style, Carmel Rooney gets a lot of commissioned work, and many of her paintings now hang in homes and businesses across Europe, the United States, South Africa and South America, as well as much closer to home.

She sells a lot of her work through her online shop and website, while other customers prefer to come into her shop and interact with her on a personal level. “It depends on the person, or the occasion, and coming into the shop gives people a chance to see me at work also,” she says.

2024 has been a very successful year for the Moate artist as she has had her work featured in a major international marketing platform called Art UpCLOSE, which enabled her to exhibit her work in Miami and New York, and she is also a member of Artsy, which is a leading marketplace for the world's emerging and established artists.

One of her paintings, which is being marketed as a unique work, is a 30 x 20 inch acrylic on canvas titled 'Sluice Gates on the River Shannon' which is for sale at $6,000 USD on ArtUpclose.

Other paintings which are also described as being unique, feature P. Egan's iconic pub in Moate and another Moate painting entitled 'Muinin, Moate, Ireland 2024' featuring a pub scene.