A measure of Ireland’s appetite for art is the rate at which the database for the events calendar on this page has grown over the past few years.

Time was, you had to go to a major centre to see good art, but today there are art galleries nationwide. A new generation has woken up to the fact that an art collection can be begun very modestly with the acquisition of works by emerging artists and those in the initial stages of their careers. If the cardinal rule is ‘buy only what you like’. The lucky collector picks winners, artists whose work represents sound financial investment in the long term.

The trick is knowing which of the young, affordable artists will stay the course. While there is no guarantee in the art business, the wise novice collector keeps an eye on what the corporate collectors are buying. An exhibition presently showing at the Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda offers a few pointers.

The UTV Collection began in 1959, when Angela, Countess of Antrim, wife of the chairman and herself a painter and sculptor, advised the trustees to buy works by local artists to decorate the offices of the company’s Belfast headquarters. By the 1980s it had became large enough to require the attention of a curator.

Theo Snoddy, art critic and author of the Dictionary of Irish Artists, was engaged to catalogue the collection and to buy paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints from key Irish and Northern Irish artists. He continued in this role for the next eighteen years. Today, Amanda Croft holds the post of art advisor for UTV.

The collection now numbers 270 works by 170 artists including Colin Middleton, Gerard Dillon, Basil Blackshaw, Cecil Maguire and John Behan. The Young Artists Collection comprises work by emerging artists. These are the ones to watch and a number of their works can be seen in the Highlanes exhibition.

The first painting that caught my attention is one that lights up the gallery, Belfast Bus by Avram Dumitrescu. Gouache on paper, it takes the form of a triptych in vibrant crimson, violet and white. Dumitrescu produced his marvellous bus for the Belfast Festival 2004.The theme then was Journeys and Migration - something close to the artist’s heart as he was born in Jersey, raised in Belfast and now lives in Texas.

A second artist previously unknown to me is Una O’Grady, who graduated from the University of Ulster in 2001. Her over-scale painting entitled The Burren is the best depiction I’ve seen of that unique, rugged landscape - you almost expect a feral goat to leap from the canvas.

Then there is the magical vision of Rosie McGurran, a graduate of the University of Ulster. The monumental Waiting, painted in 1999, is a depiction of childhood memories viewed from an adult perspective. As with all of McGurran’s work, it intrigues, charms and mesmerises.

Works by established artists include Richard Croft’s Portballintrae, 1975, one of a series of paintings investigating the reflections and patterns of movement of fishing boats moored in Portballintrae Harbour near the Giant’s Causeway.

Another such work is Ardglass Harbour, a cool abstract by TP Flanagan, a past president of the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts, which was painted during a summer expedition to Ardglass in the company of fellow artists Colin Middleton and Basil Blackshaw.

The UTV Collection, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Co Louth, 041–9803311.