Tony Shiels

Tony 'Doc' Shiels (1938-2024) was a Salford, Manchester-born artist, magician and writer. He studied in Blackpool, then London and Paris, before moving to St. Ives, Cornwall in 1958. While based in St. Ives, Shiels was made a member of the committee of the influential Penwith Society of Arts, ran the progressive Steps Gallery, and had a string of increasingly high-profile national and international exhibitions. Shiels relocated to Ireland in the early 1990s, where he continued to write, paint and exhibit work. In recent times, Shiels's lengthy artistic career has been the subject of a retrospective book, Tony Shiels: Third Generation St Ives (Auth: Steven Cousins, 2016), and an award-winning short documentary, Making Marks (Dir: Ben MacGregor, 2017). Shiels lived and had his studio near Killarney in rural County Kerry until his passing in 2024.