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Thomas McCreanor (b 1924)
Painter and potter, Tom McCreanor was born in Belfast. He studied at the
College of Art and Life Drawing at the Ulster Academy and in private studios.
His teachers included Fred Allen and Newton Penprase, McCreanor continued
to study in the evening while working for Harland & Wolff shipbuilders for six
years. He had three years subsisting on art in Belfast, two summers at the
Bloody Bridge Hostel as warden, worked for the Belfast Newsletter, 1951-
6, moved to London in 1956, was with the Daily Express 1956-63 and the
Universtiy College of London union 1965-90. He was treasurer for a couple of
years of the AIA Northern Ireland branch in the 1940’s. In Belfast McCreanor
exhibited with Arthur Armstrong and George Campbell, James MacIntyre and
Les Zukor with whom in the 1940’s and 50’s, he organized group exhibitions.
His group shows included The Mol Gallery in 1947; 6 Painters, 55a Donegall Place, 1948; 5 Painters,
same venue, 1951: and Exhibiton of Contemporary Ulster Art, sponosored by CEMA 1951 and a
solo exhibition at 55a Donegall Place 1953.
James MacIntyre (b.1926)
Born in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, James MacIntyre is a self –taught
artist who works in watercolour, oil and sculpture. In the 1940’s he
took part in group shows with artists, Daniel O’Neill, Arthur Armstrong,
the Campbell brothers, George and Arthur, Leslie Zukor, Gerard Dillon,
and Thomas McCreanor. In 1951, he traveled with George Campbell to
stay with Gerard Dillon on Inishlacken Island, which he later recounted
and illustrated in “Three Men on an Island’, published by Blackstaff
Press in 1996. He had his first solo show at 55a Donegall Place, Belfast,
in 1952. He held joint shows with Pamela Mathews at the Dublin
Painters Gallery, 1952 and at Donegall Place, 1953. MacIntyre won
a scholarship from CEMA in 1955, which took him to Paris. Stopping
off with Gerard Dillon in Abbey Road before his trip, he returned to
live in London in 1958 with his wife, Mike to work as a free-lance book illustrator and graphic
designer. He showed with the Picadilly Gallery and RA, in Northern Ireland with RUA aind in Dublin
at the RHA. MacIntyre’s work has been exhibited regularly over many years in Belfast with the
Bell Gallery, and he has had one man exhibitions at the Arts Council Gallery Belfast, the Cardiff
Gallery, the Dublin Painters` Gallery, the Reese Palley Gallery in New Jersey, the Aisling Gallery in
New York and at the Ulster Office in London. In 1983 the renowned Old Bushmills Whisky Distillery
commissioned him to produce a major exhibition of more than sixty oil paintings to celebrate their
375th Anniversary.
In 2001 he produced a second book, Making my Mark also published by Blackstaff, in which he
recollects his early life and the art scene in the Belfast of the 1940`s and 1950`s.
He was elected an Associate of the Royal Ulster Academy in 1965 and became an Academician in
1987.