In Memoriam: Brian O'Connor

BRIAN O'CONNOR IN MEMORIAM

Brian O'COnnOr

(1958–2022)

In Memoriam

Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com

cover: Idiot's Prayer, n.d., oil on canvas, 31.5 x 61.25 inches

Brian O'Connor (1958–2022): In Memoriam

LewAllen Galleries mourns the loss – much too young –of one of our most inventive, irreverent, and courageous realist painting voices. Brian O’Connor had remarkable technical facility for narrative scene, most often inflected with unpedantic social and political consciousness as acute as his creative skill.

At the hand of O’Connor, realistic figural detail and atmospheric lighting, reminiscent of Dutch master painting, frequently combined with a Blakean sense of “terrible beauty” – usually leavened with sophisticated whimsy – to produce intense surreal or magically real scenes. Within their delicious complexity and hidden in darkly clever parody, one sensed in O’Connor’s paintings a resolute if elusive search for meaning.

With good natured perplexity, he would shake his head and wonder aloud about a world he often found unintelligibly absurd and devoid of eternal truths or values. He talked about his paintings in this context as “a kind of theater where the acts are played out simultaneously through the imagination, memory and experiences of the viewer,” and in which his figures - often depicted as exaggeratedly decrepit, in states of distress or dream-like anguish – are used to make sense of the chaotic nature of the human condition. He painted to sort out the world around him, what he called “the beautiful mess.”

During his 35-year career, Brian O’Connor created visionary paintings that transcend a single genre of art – moving fluidly within the realms of realism to surrealism, and from classical to cartoon. His thought-provoking works focused on chimerical scenes brimming with illusion,

incongruity, and inscrutability. There are elements of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions, and vagary. “The paintings are about people living everyday lives, dramatic, cowardly, vicious, graceful, funny, stoic, whiney, tragic, dignified, inconsequential, and heroic lives, sometimes all at once,” mused O’Connor about his creations. Throughout this amazing artist’s body of work there were endless visual metaphors and exotic symbolism that beckoned the imagination. Nothing is obvious but everything is provocative. Precise meaning is illusory, mystery is the invitation to meaning, and ultimately O’Connor’s subject matter connects with ideas as principled parable and opens the door to individual reaction in a world that too often seems to be falling apart.

Brian O’Connor wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Brian O’Connor was born on March 2, 1958 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and he earned his BFA from the University of New Mexico. He taught at the University of New Mexico and hosted various workshops and lectures for schools, universities, and art institutions. He went on to exhibit his paintings in galleries and museums, including the Albuquerque Museum, the Harwood Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the San Antonio Museum of Art, and the Riverside Museum of Art, among others. In 1990, O’Connor was the recipient of a joint fellowship from the Western States Arts Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2020, a documentary film, Painting Gray, was produced about O’Connor and his experience continuing to paint while battling a progressive brain disorder: Posterior Cortical Atrophy. He lived and worked with his wife and collaborator, artist Iva Morris, in Veguita, New Mexico. On August 15, 2022, O’Connor died at the age of 64, but his enduring artistic legacy lives on. LewAllen Galleries is very proud to have him as part of ours.

R. Marvel

Kenneth

Petroglyph Park, n.d. Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 109 inches

White Boys, n.d. Oil on canvas, 50 x 50 inches

Sugarland, n.d. Oil on board, 9.25 x 8.5 inches

The Fool and the Maiden, n.d. Oil on canvas, 20.75 x 62 inches

Untitled I, 2018 Oil on canvas, 63 x 45 inches

Untitled II, 2018 Oil on canvas, 63 x 45 inches

Untitled Abstract, n.d. Oil on panel, 3.63 x 13.75 inches

The Thinker, 2015 Oil on canvas on panel, 15 x 9.25 inches

First Dog in the World, 2017 Oil on canvas on board, 14.25 x 11.88 inches

Study for the King's Highway, n.d. Oil on canvas, 17.5 x 10.5 inches

Democracy is Coming, 2015 Oil on panel, 12.25 x 9.5 inches

Sugarland II, n.d., Oil on panel, 12.5 x 7.13 inches

La Tristeza de la Vida (Tattooed Tears), n.d. Charcoal & graphite on paper, 6.25 x 6.5 inches

The Geometrist and His Wife, n.d., Charcoal & graphite on paper, 7 x 6.75 inches

The Jumper, n.d. Charcoal & graphite on paper, 11 x 4.5 inches

Empire's Ghost, n.d. Charcoal & graphite on paper, 5 x 11 inches