Cecil Maguire was born in Lurgan in 1930 and graduated from Queen’s University Belfast in 1951. Following a career as Senior English Master in Lurgan College, Maguire retired in 1981 to concentrate on painting full time. In 1967 he became an associate of the Royal Ulster Academy and began exhibiting at the RHA in 1971. Cecil Maguire now lives and works for a great part of the year in Roundstone, Co. Galway, where he feels very much at home in an area which has always been the inspiration for much of his work - an area of tranquility and ever changing landscape. His work is part of many public, private and major national collections including The National Self Portrait Collection and The Ulster Museum, and The United Nations Headquarters, New York.