Hector McDonnell

A younger son of Randal McDonnell, 8th Earl of Antrim, by his marriage to the sculptor Angela Sykes, and the younger brother of Alexander McDonnell, Hector McDonnell was born in Belfast. He grew up on the family estate at Glenarm, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, and was educated at Eton and the University of Oxford, where he read modern history.[1][2]

McDonnell studied painting in Munich and Vienna in 1965 and 1966, before going up to Oxford. In 1979 he was the winner of the Darmstädter Kunstpreis and held a Retrospective Exhibition at the Matildenhöhe, Darmstadt, in 1981. A further Retrospective Exhibition was at the Ulster Museum, Belfast, from 2003 to 2004. He lives and works in Northern Ireland and New York.[3] The Belfast Telegraph has described McDonnell as "one of Ireland's greatest living artists".[4]

• The Ould Orange Flute (1983)
• The Night before Larry was Stretched (1984)
• A Chinese Journey (1986, edited by Anna Pao-Sohmen, illustrated by Hector McDonnell)
• A Journey to Tsaparang (1990)
• Fools Rush in: A Call to Christian Clowning (1993, with Roly Bain)
• The Wild Geese of the Antrim MacDonnells (Irish Academic Press, 1996)
• A Rwandan Journey - Sept-Oct 1996 (1996)
• Diction Aires & French Letters (2000, with Elisabeth Wise)
• A History of Dunluce (2004)
• Irish Round Towers (Wooden Books, 2005, ISBN 978-1-90426-331-9)
• St Patrick: his life and legend (2007)
• Ireland's Other Poetry: Anonymous to Zozimus (The Lilliput Press, 2007, with John Wyse Jackson,ISBN 978-1-84351-122-9)
• Holy Hills and Pagan Places of Ireland (2008)
• Dublin's Other Poetry: Rhymes and Songs of the City (The Lilliput Press, 2009, with John Wyse Jackson)
• Ulster's Other Poetry: Verses and Songs of the Province (The Lilliput Press, 2009, with John Wyse Jackson)
• Ireland's Other History (2015)

• hectormcdonnell.com (personal web site)
• Hector McDonnell at Artnet
• Victoria Mary Clarke, A master at the fine art of humour (2004) at independent.ie