Martin Gale was born in Worcester, England in 1949 and moved to Ireland at an early age. He studied painting and drawing at the National College of Art and Design from 1968 to 1973 and now lives and works in Co. Kildare.
Gale's work focuses on the interaction between the inhabitants of contemporary Ireland and the rural landscape, and the shift from rural to urban life. His meticulously composed paintings often depict isolated figures - both human and animal - that, through the use of a dispassionate, almost clinical style, are strangely dislocated from their surroundings. Likewise, buildings sit uneasily in the landscape, though dilapidated and tumbled-down houses hint towards a reclaimation of the rural from an attempt to suburbanise the lush fields and tangled hedgegrows of the natural order.
In 1982, Martin Gale was elected a member of Aosdána and in 1996 he became a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. A former Board member of the National Gallery of Ireland, he represented Ireland at the Paris Biennale in 1980 and his paintings have been included in several major surveys of contemporary and 20th century Irish art, both nationally and internationally. In 2013, Gale was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Art from NUI Maynooth. His work is represented in major public collections throughout the country, including The National Gallery of Ireland, The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon, AIB, Bank of Ireland, OPW / State Art Collection, ESB, Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Chester Beatty Library, and Crawford Art Gallery, Cork.