Our Story

Originally from Venezuela and after living in places such as New York, London and Milan, Juan Sotoparra first arrived in the West of Ireland over 20 years ago. He then went onto complete his art degree, and he has continued to develop his artistic endeavours while running his own professional architectural design practice.

Kerry Quinlan is originally from Co. Kerry, but fully considers herself a Galway girl after growing up in Salthill. She has always been artistic and creative. While spending over 20 years working in the business sector, Kerry always found time to feed that passion for creativity, through interior design, up-cycling furniture and even creating her own unique lampshades. 

 

Founded in Galway in 2018 by Juan and Kerry, Sketchico casts a fresh eye on iconic landmarks as well as finding the beauty in the simple moments that can often go overlooked.

They originally designed the pieces for themselves. Wishing to have a personal element in their home’s decoration, they drew much of the inspiration for the pieces from Kerry’s memories of being a teenager, spending her Summers at Blackrock with her friends, jumping off the top of the Diving Tower for hours on end.

After turning those memories into contemporary art pieces, they received a lot of interest from people who saw the works either in person or online. They began to create prints as gifts for friends and family.

While Juan has been running his architecture studio, with Kerry working alongside him as the interior designer, interest in SKETCHICO quietly begun to grow. This led to Kerry, who has a background in working with start-ups, taking the reins of the business side of SKETCHICO, with the hope of making it a household name.

During the creation of a SKETCHICO piece, each print starts out as a photograph and goes through a digital manipulation process, where they modify the colour palette, simplify the image and create a stylised version of the original. It then evolves into a digital painting.

Each print is carefully crafted, using high quality archival ink and art grade paper. As SKETCHICO is a fully grown Irish venture, all materials are sourced through Irish suppliers. 

Our Stockists:

2 Wild Geese, Galway City 

Kilkenny Designs - Cork City

Meadows & Byrne, Nationwide

Foxford Woollen Mills, Foxford & Westport 

Ro & Vee, Barna, Galway 

Kenny's Lahinch Art Gallery 

LQ Art Gallery & Gift Shop, Waterville, Co. Kerry 

Tree Bark Store, Moycullen, Galway 

Ré Coffee & Design, Galway 

Standún, Spiddal, Galway

Eirlooms, Dublin 

The Gallery -  Donegal

The Narrow Space Gallery - Clonmel 

The International Rugby Experience - Limerick