sculptor
.
Born in Killeenduff
, Easky
, County Sligo, where he was schooled, Conlon won a five year scholarship to the National College of Art and Design
in 1960. Domhnail O'Murchadha, assistant Professor of Sculpture, encouraged him to complete a Sculpture Diploma. He then spent a year obtaining an Art Teachers Certificate and became a scupluture Associate of the College, where he stayed until 1972 apart from eighteen months as Art Teacher in Navan Vocational School.
In 1972 Conlon returned to Sligo
to teach at the Sligo Vocational School for a year before becoming a Lecturer at the Sligo Regional Technical College (now Sligo Institute of Technology), where he helped to develop a diploma course in Art.
The philosophy which underlines my work is based on change, continuity and the search for measures in natural order. The value of a sculpture relies on its own existence through time, independent of its creator and should usually speak for itself. It should beckon you to walk into its space, to travel its surface and edge, to sense, to touch, to peer into and ponder. As you leave it should invite you to return another time so that it can communicate further.
To appreciate sculpture is to look, to touch, to sense, to learn and communicate.
Sculpture is a celebration of lime and time. The stone I carve is millions of years of age. It is old and stubborn and reluctant to change but change it must for that is the challenge to the sculptor.