Hilary Elmes was born in Dublin in 1963 and now lives in Co. Carlow. Since graduating from fine Art painting from the National College of Art and Design in 1988, she has exhibited extensively in Ireland, UK, Germany and Latvia. She has had solo exhibitions at the Linenhall Gallery (Castlebar), Wexford Arts Centre, Nicolas Gallery in Belfast and Hallward Gallery in Dublin. She has shown in many group exhibitions including the annual Cadogan Contemporary, London; Ross Fine Art, Letterkenny; Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin; Oireachtas Exhibition, Dublin; Éigse Carlow; Íontas and Boyle Arts Festival.
A member of the Visual Arts Committee of Éigse Carlow for two years, she exhibited almost annually from 1996 to 2009 either as invited artist or in the Éigse open Selection exhibition. She was also an Invited Artist in Éigse’s thirty-year retrospective, shown at the VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, June-August 2010.