Rod Coyne was born in Dublin in 1967. He attended the Dun Laoghaire School of Art 1986-87 and the Crawford College of Art in Cork, 1987-1990. He spent the rest of the 1990s painting predominantly in Dusseldorf, Germany where he held four solo exhibitions and exhibited in Germany, Belgium, United Kingdom and the United States.

In 1999, Rod and his wife returned to Ireland, settling in Dalkey. Later that year, he won the London South Bank Banner Competition and was subsequently offered a residency at Cill Rialaig, Ballinskelligs. This was followed by his first Irish solo exhibition, entitled "A Homecoming" in Dublin that summer.

Since then he has shown his work in the Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Show, Ashford Gallery, An Oireachtais, the Royal Ulster Academy, and innumerable galleries in Ireland, Europe and in the US.

Rod Coyne currently (2010) lives and works at his studio and gallery in Avoca, Wicklow, Co Dublin. He has participated in several group exhibitions of young Irish artists and is represented in the publication Millennial Art Collection.


In the last two years, he has made the switch from acrylic paints to oils, giving his paintings a deeper more vibrant essence. Rod experiments with his mediums creating a depth on the canvas. Of working with paint, he said:


The layers of paint bring the viewer further into the picture giving a more three-dimensional experience than ever before,

"This is the result of twelve months intensive experimentation, I have been re-interpreting my old haunts, the seascapes of Dublin and Killiney bays, the Wicklow Mountains and Cill Rialaig Co, Kerry.

After painting en pleine air as usual, I take the canvases back to the studio and manipulate them. I have sent some images into such a tailspin that the original subject has become completely dissolved."