User:Myrotide/sandbox

Later life and death
O’Doherty continued to create prestigious public art works including The Emigrants (1990), now located at the Quay Trail, Derry; An Crann Óir (1991), Central Bank Plaza, Dublin; Swans (Passage) (1994), Antrim Area Hospital; To The Skellig (1995), Cahersiveen, Co. Kerry. In 1996 his James Connolly was unveiled in Beresford Place, a site where Connolly had addressed political gatherings. Further commissions include the Bicentenary Sculpture (1997), Royal Hospital, Belfast and Fauscailt/The Pikemen (1998), N25, Wexford. In 1998, President Mary MacAleese unveiled O'Doherty's Famine Memorial in Liverpool. He then won a competition to create an Irish famine memorial in Woodchester, New York. The Great Hunger Memorial was unveiled in VE Macy Park in 2002. The work won many awards including “Most Outstanding Work of Public Art” by the American Institute of Architects. In 2007, O’Doherty won the international Selvaag/Peer Gynt competition. His entry, The Thin Priest With The Fowling Net, is in the Peer Gynt Sculpture Park in Oslo Norway.

In 2002, O’Doherty retired from lecturing to work on his art. The same year his photographs from the Irish Traditional Music Archive were exhibited in New York, California and Virginia. Around this time he was treated for throat cancer but continued to work apace. The following year he moved to Ferns in Co. Wexford and converted stone outbuildings into an artist's studio.

In 2005, O'Doherty sculpted The Damselfly for Waterford County Council. In 2006, he won the Connor/Moran prize for sculpture at the Royal Hibernian Academy exhibition. He was also commissioned by Mayo Co. Council to celebrate life on the Island of Inishturk and created Na hOileánaigh. Girl at a Loom, Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone followed in 2007. In 2008 he produced Another Season, in Clane for Kildare County Council. In 2010, President Mary MacAleese unveiled his last large scale work, Protogonos, at St James’s Hospital Dublin.

O’Doherty died suddenly from throat cancer on 4 August 2011. He is buried in Kiltealy, Co. Wexford.