Bernard Magennis was born in Rossglass, County Down, Ireland, in a small thatched farm house on the shores of Dunrum Bay with its panoramic views across the waters of the Bay to Newcastle and Kilkeel at the foot of Slieve Donard and the Mourne Mountains towering majestically above into the sky.
It was this heavenly landscape at his front door that first inspired him as a child, when first given a Christmas present of a box of paints, to begin a lifelong love of painting. It was later at his schools in Killough and Ardglass where his teachers began encouraging him to paint, and it was they who bought his first landscapes and gave him the initial impetus to think of it as a career.
His work is included in numerous private collections in Ireland, France, The United States and in South America where he has travelled widely of late.