Contact Me:
The best way to get in touch is to drop me an email. Tell me how the weather is where you are, inside and out, or the smell of the last plant you stopped to stoop over, or the music that makes you soften into a stretch of long night:
Email: donakello@gmail.com.
I am also active on Instagram, where you can see very recent work:
Instagram: @donakello.
I am from Oughterard, Co. Galway, Ireland, and currently live in Portland OR, USA.
Short Artist Bio
Donal Kelly is a photographer from Oughterard who has been slowly accumulating a body of work drawn from his life and the landscapes it passes through. Generally using vintage analogue cameras and a slow and gradual process, he often blends his photos with scraps of late night poetry. A recipient of National Arts Council Agility awards in 2023 and 2024, Donal has shown work in multiple group exhibitions, and in a solo show, “Walking Edges”, in Outset Gallery in Galway in 2024.
I photograph primarily in the west of Ireland, with my main area a day’s driving range from my Oughterard home; south towards Clare’s karst, locally into the soggy bogs and stony heights of Connemara, north to Mayo’s Atlantic coast. Sometimes too I probe further up or down the coast, or if given chance, far further afield. I’ve long been drawn to being out in the world, and picked up a camera as a tool for exploring/seeing, responding to features and textures of light and landscape, and the chaotic layers of human activities and histories like skins on the land: holy wells, lazy beds, dumped cars, holiday homes, planning permission signs, aspirational new builds, decaying ruins. I move slowly, leaking time in places, returning, walking, sitting.
I scribble, too, try to coax words into coherence, become aware of my intrusions, always somewhere in the pendulum swing between cynicism and curiosity.
Photographs promise preservation, stretching moments into flattened rectangular slivers. But as artefacts they allow both honesty and distortions, always seen in a context of a viewer and viewing, yet a fascinating medium for contemplation, expression, and memory.
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Awards/Shows/Etc
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Recent shows:
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2026
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126 Gallery Galway member’s show, January. I exhibited a hand-stitched book of colour photographs and poems.
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Oughterard Courthouse Arts Program summer program. I exhibited 16 photographs and 3 DIY books as part of a three-artist show called Túath.
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2025
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Iova Group Culture Night Exhibition, Dublin, September. One photograph, “Springside of Winter, Nogra.”
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Outset Gallery, Galway, OXO 2025 winter open. One photograph “Looking South onto Inagh Valley” shown.
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2024
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Outset Gallery, Galway, OXO 2024 winter open. Two photographs: “Window to shape the light of our days, Killanin”, and “Window on a past of lost futures, Mason Island”
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PhotoIreland Halftone Print Exhibition, Dublin, November. Two colour photographs included, “Keeper’s Hut, Inverbeg”, and “Small-flower Sweet Briar” (both framed).
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Clifden Arts Festival Arts Trail, September. “And in your Eddy Flow”, black and white photograph.
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The Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, Clare, Summer Open, July. Two black and white photographs from Clare/Galway coast (framed).
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Outset Gallery, Galway. March. Solo show, “Walking Edges”, featuring 23 photographs, 4 poems, and a zine.
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2023
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Outset Gallery XO Winter Open, December 2023.
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Arts Trail, Clifden Arts Festival September 2023. One photograph “Looking towards Errisbeg from Moyrus, Carna”.
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Terra Firma, group show in the Oughterard Courthouse (3 photos with poems), July 2023
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F-Stop photography (online) magazine‘s Spring issue.
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2022
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The Library Project’s Halftone print fair (November). Temple Bar, Dublin.
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Outset Gallery’s Winter Open, Galway.
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Courthouse Gallery Ennisymon Trasna print fair.
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126 Gallery’s Winter print display (supporting Ukraine relief charity).
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2021
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Winter Open and Trasna, the Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, Clare
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Awards:
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2024
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Agility Award, Arts Council of Ireland
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2023
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Agility Award, Arts Council of Ireland
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Outset Gallery Showcase Award (OXO 2023)
‘It’s not aimed at anyone’… but I like it. Good work. And is that song your own? And is the other one too? Don’t mean Mr Tambourine MAN!
Hi Donal!
We met Jenn yesterday on flight from Juneau. Love your bucket of words, empty, so not empty. Mo/Maureen, my wife and I try to give poems to our Alaska bogs and Eagle winds. And did you say Hi to Ravens tumbling as you powdered Eaglecrest slopes. That upside down flying might have your name on it! Look forward to meeting you.