Conor Fallon:The sculptor Conor Fallon, who died on Wednesday, was best known for his elegant steel sculptures of birds and animals.
He was a perfectionist in every sense, and the formal beauty of his work stemmed from a prolonged study of his sources in nature and in the progressive refinement of line and shape, pursued through a rigorous process of drawings and three-dimensional studies.
He was especially interested in birds of prey for their sleekness of line and their concentrated energy. Horses, fish and the human head and figure were also important subjects.
He moved effortlessly from small to large projects.
Conor Fallon was born in Dublin in 1939, the third of six sons of the poet Padraic Fallon and Dorothea 'Don' (for Madonna) Maher. After Conor's birth the family moved to Co Wexford where, as well as running a farm, Padraic worked for Customs and Excise.
Conor recalled that even his first drawings were of birds. He attended Trinity College, largely because it was a given that no-one could actually make a living as an artist. Because he wanted to work in the open air he had biology or geology in mind, but he was told that he was not cut out to be a scientist. Instead, he worked as an accountant and as a farmer as a means to support his painting.
Jack B. Yeats was the dominant influence on his landscape paintings, though he knew Tony O'Malley, Richard Kingston and George Campbell, and was familiar with their work.
In 1964 he travelled to Cornwall. Tony O'Malley was by then based there - at Padraic's suggestion - and it was arranged that Conor would meet the charismatic Peter Lanyon, perhaps the dominant artistic personality in the artists' colony there. As fate would have it, he arrived on the day that Lanyon was killed in a gliding accident.
He met Nancy Wynne-Jones, who had been one of Lanyon's students. She had trained as a composer and turned to painting. They became close. He moved to Cornwall in 1965, and they married the following year. He joined the Newlyn Society of Artists and was later elected as a member.
In Cornwall he shifted his interest from painting to sculpture, though he did not relinquish painting altogether and drawing remained central to his work.
The sculptor Denis Mitchell was a strong influence in this development. So too was the example of Breon O'Casey, though in formal terms Naum Gabo and Picasso were clearly central in shaping his own sculptural vision, with its emphasis on line, space and planes.
In 1972, the year that he held his first solo exhibition in Cornwall, he and Nancy moved to Kinsale, Co Cork, though they later moved on and settled in Co Wicklow.
He went on to exhibit widely in Ireland, showing first with the Emmet Gallery from 1975, with the Lad Lane Gallery, and then, from 1984, regularly with the Taylor Galleries.
In 1980 he was awarded the Oireachtas Gold Medal for Sculpture.
His work was included in numerous survey shows, and there was a major solo exhibition at the Sligo Art Gallery in 1994 and a joint show at the RHA Gallagher Gallery with Sean McSweeney in 1996. From 1995 he also showed with Theo Waddington Fine Art in London.
Among his many commissions were sculptures for St Patrick's Hospital, Irish Life, UCD, UCC and a landmark piece for Independent Newspapers.
In 1989 he was elected to the Royal Hibernian Academy and served two terms as RHA secretary, during which his contribution was pivotal in re-energising the organisation and turning its fortunes around.
His work at the RHA absorbed huge amounts of time and energy, however, and curtailed the attention he could devote to his own work, which was a source of frustration. Certainly in recent years he applied himself to making sculpture with exceptional zeal and industry. He and Nancy both worked in their studios at Ballard House near Ballinaclash in Co Wicklow until her death earlier this year.
He is survived by his children John and Bridget, his brothers Brian, Ivan and Padraic, his grandchildren Fox, Tom and Ivo.
Conor Fallon: born Dublin 1939; died Co Wicklow, October 3th, 2007