 In 1954 he won the first Royal Hibernian Academy Scholarship in Art - the MacAuley Fellowship - and went to Spain in 1955, working and studying in Madrid, Toledo and Barcelona.In 1959, he founded, with others, The Independent Artists' Exhibition (IAE) in opposition to the Living Art Group and the RHA.He refused the offer of associate academician at the RHA in 1960 and resigned as chairman of the IAE in the same year.