The Ireland-U.S. Council Award for Outstanding Portraiture is an important part of the Ireland-U.S. Council’s program to support the Arts and Arts Education in Ireland. The esteemed award has been an important career marker for many of today’s successful portrait painters in Ireland and is presented in Ireland to an artist whose work is judged to be of outstanding merit.

Council member-company Fiserv is the principal financial sponsor of the Award for Outstanding Portraiture . As part of the sponsorship program associated with the Award, every Council member in the United States and in Ireland receives a copy of Ireland’s premier visual arts and heritage quarterly journal, 39 years in publication, the Irish Arts Review.

Other benefits for Council members include a program of discounts available through the Irish Arts Review to various arts events in Ireland. Also included are calendars of upcoming arts activities throughout the year plus online information on prices of Irish Art and results of auction sales.

The Ireland-U.S. Council’s 2022 Award for Outstanding Portraiture Presented to Dublin Graffiti artist, ACHES for his portrait: This Dream and You. In conjunction with the Irish Arts Review and the Royal Hibernian Academy, the Award was presented to the graffiti artist – a Dublin-based painter who goes by the name ACHES. According to the protocols established by the members of the graffiti arts community, artists are known by their signature “tag handles” not their given names.

Aches is one of the most talented graffiti and street mural artists working in Ireland today. His portrait murals include Savita Halappanavar (2018), - Dolores O’Riordan (2019) and President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy (2022).

Aches started making graffiti as a teenager, spraying tags and words with commercial aerosols before moving to making pictures around 2015. Like most street artists, he is self-taught, learning his craft through trial and error, while finding support from friends and gaining recognition initially from other street artists.

The winning painting was chosen from all the portrait exhibits at this year’s Royal Hibernian Academy’s (RHA) 192nd Annual Exhibition which runs through July 24 at the Academy.

At a prize-giving ceremony earlier in the year at the RHA building on Ely Place in Dublin, ACHES’ was awarded the Ireland-U.S. Council’s €5,000 award bursary. The formal presentation of the award citation was made to the artist by Council President Tom Higgins at our MidSummer Gala Dinner on Friday, July 1, 2022 in Dublin Castle in Ireland.