Eddie Kennedy was born in 1959 beside one of the oldest polo clubs in the world: The All Ireland Polo Club, in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland. He spent his entire youth working with not just polo, but hunting and racing as well. At nineteen years of age Eddie started working in the film business as a film horse stuntman, featuring in several films doubling for actors including Michael Caine, Liam Neeson and David Soul.
“I have always combined my polo career with an art career, and in 1986 that is what brought me to the UK. Following a very successful one-man exhibition at the Godolphin Gallery in Dublin I decided to move to the UK to follow my love of art and passion for polo. It was around this time that I produced a series of very successful limited edition prints which are still hanging in private homes and polo offices alike throughout the world”.
However marriage, kids and the need to get back to horses saw me doing less and less art and going back into polo working at various clubs until very quickly I was offered the opportunity to work with the Mexican 10 Goaler, Memo Gracida for the Maple Leaf high goal team. At its peak, that team had some of some of the best horses in the world. As the Maple Leaf string was about to be sold off a new patron arrived in the UK in the form of Prince Jefri of Brunei, who bought not only the string of horses but the Coworth Park Polo complex as well, to which he added another large number of horses bringing the total to over 200. Following the demise of the Brunei polo organization I then went to Dubai where I was responsible for the completion and setting up of a brand new polo and equestrian club.
Eddie Kennedy returned to the UK in the summer of 2007 and after many years he felt the need to start creating through the medium of pencil and paper the art that comes through his passion with horses and polo. Some of his coaching projects have taken Eddie to places like Russia with Alfonso Pieres and India with Eduardo Amaya. His paintings and drawings are hanging in polo offices and players homes all over the world. The current merchandising logo for the United States Polo Association was taken from one of his early paintings.
He concludes: “I am currently dividing my time between coaching polo and developing my art”.