Gerard Maguire was born in Belfast, in 1963. He graduated from Queen’s University, Belfast, in 1986 and is a self taught artist.

Maguire cites the great Irish landscape painters, Paul Henry and James Humbert Craig as foremost among his artistic influences. He admires Henry’s works for the way in which they show how a landscape can be pared down to its essential elements. While in relation to Craig’s landscapes he has always been drawn to the ochres and umbers, and the way he builds up the paintwork over a coloured ground. Craig’s treatment of light has also been particularly instrumental to Maguire, illustrating for him how to capture fleeting light with a simple brushstroke or impasto. The paintings of Jack B. Yeats have also proved influential to Gerard Maguire’s approach to landscape painting.

It is a sense or feeling of place that Gerard Maguire strives to capture in his work. His landscapes do not replicate topographical detail of particular locations but rather aim to capture the atmosphere using gestural brushmarks and the layering and excavating of paint to reveal the underlying pigment. He does not use sketches or photographs other than as an aide to memoir as relying on memory allows extraneous detail to be omitted.

Gerard Maguire has had numerous group and solo exhibitions in Northern Ireland and Dublin as well as in London.

His work is in private collections in Ireland, England, Scotland, the United States and Hong Kong, and three of his paintings are held by the Department of Environment.