Ciara Agnew is from Dundalk, County Louth. She studied art in University of Ulster, where she obtained a BA Honours Degree in Fine and Applied Arts, with specialisation in the area of painting. She is a member of The North Louth Artists and of Louth Craftmark. Her work is held in private and public collections in Ireland, France, The US and Australia.

Ciara’s artistic objective is to “explore our relationship to the world that surrounds us both physically and spiritually, through horizontal and vertical strips and blocks of colour, which are all around us.” Some of these edges have a blurred or indefinite quality and others remain straight. In her work, she strives to create tension between the two as she feels when something is imperfect there is more truth in it, more expression.
She painted A Closer Walk in 2007 and it is the first of her works to depict the rectangle in the centre of the composition. This painting is about looking deeper spiritually. Ciara explains: “Paintings I paint with blue are more spiritual. I feel that we have lost our relationship with the world as a sacred place, and that has an enormous influence on what I paint.”

Pull Me Through was painted at a time of personal turmoil in the artist’s life. This painting is about her grief on the death of her mother, Ann. It was one of the first paintings she did for her solo show, Limitations, at the Basement Gallery, Dundalk in 2008. Of the two works, this one is more personal to her and she is reflective about the impetus for making it: “I prefer Pull Me Through because the painting means more to me, it’s more personal and my Mum would have been delighted that Louth County Council bought it for their collection.”
Ciara’s work has been widely collected, including the acquisition of fourteen of her paintings purchased for the State Collection and which hang in various government buildings throughout the country.