AndyMc’s Art, breathing new life into the city.
Maybe it was a splash of colour on a traffic signal box, part of the Dublin Canvas project, or a mural on one of the city’s walls. But if you’ve ever wandered around Dublin, chances are you’ve already stumbled across one of AndyMc’s works. Bright colours, dynamic lines and characters brimming with personality — AndyMc’s work doesn’t just sit quietly on a wall. It breathes new life into the city.
AndyMc is an Irish artist from Palmerstown whose roots run deep in the local creative scene. He is a graduate of Ballyfermot College, where he studied printmaking and earned an HND in Visual Communications.
As a trained graphic designer, his art has that unmistakable boldness: blocks of colour, powerful typography, graffiti-style elements, you name it. At first glance, all these elements seem to be disrupting the portraits that his works usually have in focus. But look again, and you’ll see it's intentional, a signature kind of chaos that he masterfully stitches together.
Andy often paints familiar Irish faces — James Joyce, Nora Barnacle, poet Patrick Kavanagh, and his muse Hilda — but he’s just as likely to invent characters entirely. The “who” isn’t the point; it’s the expression of the person. All the people he captures communicate through their features, and especially their eyes. He has a gift for catching very specific emotions: a tangle of loss, hope, grit, or determination — sometimes all of them at once.
This eclectic blend of graphic style, eye-catching colour, and expressive faces is the artist’s way of pulling the public into the message behind each piece. The works might be striking in looks, but they also hold a particular sensitivity at their core— and that’s exactly what gives Andy’s art the power to address issues far bigger than the surface they are painted on. He has openly voiced support for a free Palestine, not only through fundraisers like the one he organised for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, but also through his art itself. One print, for instance, shows a woman gritting her teeth, the word “FREE” layered repeatedly around her. Anger, resilience, and hope are all depicted by the strokes of his brush into one single image.
Another of his political works appeared this summer in Waterford, responding to attacks on Ireland’s immigrant community, particularly the Irish-Indian one. Titled “United Ireland,” the mural shows an Irish boy and an Indian girl standing back to back, their hands dripping with colour. Among them, stand letters spelling the words “United Ireland”. These appear in hand-print shapes, as if painted by the children themselves. In a caption for his Instagram post about the mural, Andy wrote:“Different hands, one message: unity.” It’s a simple but powerful reminder that diversity strengthens Ireland — and that every community has a hand (or multiple) in shaping a better one. You can find the mural in the Waterford Cultural Quarter, where it’s been brightening the city’s walls since August.
Beyond the vivid colours and layered styles, AndyMc’s work carries direct, purposeful messages for anyone passing by. As he once mentioned: “With the birth of my son, I aim to show him that you’ve got to do what you love — simply for the love of doing it.” His art does exactly that, showing not just passion for the craft but care for those who are meant to see it. In every mural and print, there’s a sense of wanting to make the city — and the world — a little more aware, a little more connected, and a whole lot brighter.
Written by Aniela Eftimie
Edited by Niall Carey
