THE GENTLE ARTIST: RECORDS OF EXPERIENCE

Aoife Balfe is an artist, animator, and educator based in Dublin and Wicklow, Ireland. She is interested in capturing and conveying experience through sequential art and film. Her work uses a mixture of media including print and drawing from direct observation with traditional and digital tools.

Since graduating from the BA in Animation at IADT in 2013 much of her work has been on small independent animation projects, working collaboratively with other artists. She has been teaching life drawing and experimental animation since 2017, driven by a desire to share knowledge and cultivate a passion for personal project work. In 2022 she joined informal practice sharing collective In Practice(s), finding new pathways for thinking about and doing art. She graduated with First Class Honours from the MA in Animation at IADT with her project The Gentle Artist: Records of Experience in 2026.

Aoife has been practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for over ten years and has achieved the rank of brown belt. Bringing together her two loves of BJJ and drawn animation, her latest film The Gentle Artist: Records of Experience is about the intersection of this physical practice and her creative practice. She combines her experiences with research into the field of phenomenology to use animation as a means of examining embodiment and sensation as encountered in both practices.