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Welcome, Jackie Toal is a multi-disciplinary artist, designer, researcher and educator who creates work in both traditional media and using digital technologies. She loves traditional painting created with oils, watercolours, acrylics, mixed media and both embraces the potential of digital technologies for art creation especially for  interesting composition, colour, perspective, use of light and form.  She is also keenly interested in the tactile hands on approach of screen printing and layering of colours for designs for printed textiles. Pattern is something she is  very intrigued by and she also loves to draw with pen and ink to explore shape and textures.

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Jackie sees both traditional tools and digital as means for expressing creativity and mark making as well as for the diversity of work. She is very much inspired by the colour of nature and particularly flowers which feature predominately in her painting work, the main genre of Jackie’s work is floral and still life but she has experimented with some abstraction geometrics, landscape and character illustration as well as motion graphics and animation.  She is inspired by artists such as Henri Matisse and his use of colour, Georgia O’Keeffe’s huge florals, Frida Kahlo’s use of colour and meaning, as well as pioneering textile designers such as Jacqueline Groag and Lucienne Day.

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Jackie is currently a Lecturer in Immersive Technologies at Dundalk Institute of Technology since January 2023, prior to that she has over twenty years’ experience at Southern Regional College teaching on disciplines ranging from Art fundamentals to that of Immersive technologies (Virtual and Augmented reality).  She is an educator and is keen innovator of use of both digital and traditional creative tools in the curriculum for teaching practice.

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Jackie has always been interested in art from young age.  Her artistic journey started to develop more fully firstly as a student on the Foundation Diploma in Art and design experimenting with graphics, painting, design, fine art and textiles. which was advanced by undertaking a degree at Art college University of Ulster at Belfast with specialism in printed textiles and screen printing,  She particularly enjoyed all aspects from developing ideas, creating designs and the practical element with use of squeegee to create the final fabric collections. I She just loved seeing the layering of colour build up screen after screen in a pattern repeat After completing her undergraduate degree, led opportunities in London in textiles in her early career.  There she developed experience working in swimwear design and printed textiles. This was fun and creative time using traditional tools for creating surface pattern designs.  In her early career she sold printed textile designs in US, Europe, Japan and UK. She then returned to Northern Ireland and completed a graduate management programme developing her skillset, leading to a role in interior design, then as a colourist for fabrics for furnishings where she developed a wealth of experience in screen printing advancing her knowledge of colour use for design.  In 2000 Jackie then returned to studies by undertaking a Masters of Science in Computing and Design, this lead to a new journey using digital tools for creativity, user experience and design, which eventually led to her current teaching role. 

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With her background in printed textiles she continues to explore surface pattern with digital tools and can often be found with her iPad drawing and mark making creating patterns and designs as well as exploring tools such as Google Tilt brush for immersive Art.  She loves to take time in between a busy teaching schedule to draw and paint and develop her Creative practice.  

Jackie has a BA Hons in Textiles and Fashion (1990-1993), an MSc in Computing and Design (2000-20001) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching for Further and Higher Education (2005) from Ulster university. She has sold paintings regionally and private commissions over the years.  Jackie Toal also has recently been selected into the Ulster Society of Women Artists in 2022 and is a diploma member now.