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Brian O’Connor mystique a messaGe Brian O’Connor mystique with with a messaGe
BRIAN O’CONNOR
MYSTIQUE WITH A MESSAGE
LewAllenGalleries LewAllenGalleries
BRIAN O’CONNOR
MYSTIQUE WITH A MESSAGE
LewAllenGalleries Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com cover: Gone Fishin’, oil on canvas, 46 x 32 in
BRIAN O’CONNOR: MYSTIQUE WITH A MESSAGE unraveling tightly packed metaphor and analogy to discover resonance between image and experience in modern life.
The man bent over his guitar, A shearsman of sorts. The day was green. They said, “You have a blue guitar,
Within O’Connor’s compelling pictorial energy — occasionally trance-like in its intensity of image and composition — there seems a steady fidelity to trying to make sense of the chaotic nature of the human condition. He paints, he says, in order to sort out the world around him, what he calls “the beautiful mess.” One is reminded in O’Connor’s work of Coleridge’s definition of art as “the subjection of matter to spirit so as to be transformed into symbols through which the spirit reveals itself.”
You do not play things as they are.” The man replied, “Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar.” And they said then, “But play, you must, A tune beyond us, yet ourselves, A tune upon the blue guitar Of things exactly as they are.” Wallace Stevens
In O’Connor’s fantastic narratives, real people and real objects are transformed by the artist’s own eccentric, playful, sometimes anguished but always deeply thoughtful blue guitar. One senses in his often complex scenes, and hidden within darkly clever humor and parody, a resolute if elusive search for meaning in a world that is often unintelligibly absurd and devoid of eternal truths or enduring values.
“The Man With The Blue Guitar” Brian O’Connor paints in oil — and fantasy in extremis. Yet his genius may well be to make the fantastic seem plausible. On O’Connor’s canvas — his own “blue guitar”— things as they are become the “things beyond us,” and those things — to eyes seduced by the artist’s painterly verisimilitude — seem also to become things exactly as they could be. The difference between what is real and what is imagined blurs even as the fervid contours of an enormously individualist imagination are revealed.
O’Connor thinks of his paintings as “a kind of theater where the acts are played out simultaneously… through the imagination, memory and experiences of the viewer.” He deals in his work with a range of everyday existence — physical, emotional, psychological and moral. The reality of his images is intensified by what is often a sense of the exaggeratedly decrepit; figures in states of distress or dream-like anguish that are simultaneously arresting and thought-provoking.
O’Connor combines a remarkable technical ability for realist painting with a highly contemporized variation of the neo-Gothic. At the hand of O’Connor, the realistic detail and atmospheric lighting of Dutch master painting reminiscent of Vermeer or Frans Hal engages the “terrible beauty” of William Blake and the exaggerated passions of Henry Fuseli. Tucked under the often whimsical veneer of O’Connor’s surreal or magically real scenarios are layers of inferable meaning that extend beyond the merely quirky. Close scrutiny is rewarded by the prospect for
In this regard, O’Connor’s pictures feature choice of image and tone that ranges from the purely familiar and comfortable to the wildly absurd and even disturbing. Scenes depict people in varying states of struggle, oppression, futility, torpor, despair, conflict, salvation, temptation, torment, languor. The images rarely include the overtly joyful 2
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hallucinatory state (presumably therefore devoid of moralistic intention), on another level the pictures often can be read as a kind of cautionary tale. It is perhaps not a bridge too far to connect scenes — similar in this regard to some by Blake, Ryder, or Newman — with principled parable that seems more inevitable than premeditated in the work of this unpretentious artist savant whose social and political consciousness is as acute as his creative and technical prowess.
but they unfailingly illustrate the deeply profound. Concealed but tantalizing metaphor and exotic symbolism abound and beckon the imagination. Nothing is obvious but everything is provocative. Precise meaning is elusive and ultimately subject to individual interpretation — or, more often, intuition. With O’Connor, one is reminded of the description of the late 19th and early 20th century symbolist Odilon Redon: “mystique with a method.” With O’Connor perhaps “mystique with a message” is more fitting.
In “Gone Fishing” for example, a young girl is caught between a white dog — a symbol in certain Christian traditions of spiritual purity and protection through righteousness — and a roaring fire, suggestive of the inferno of Hell. As the girl prepares to cast her line in the direction of the fire, the dog stares away. The image might thus be read as a warning that succumbing to temptation and casting one’s line with the wages of sin can lead to perdition.
Although the artist talks about his work as coming from a kind of shaman-like (though drug-free)
“Earth Angel (Deux Ex Machina)” presents a tableaux fully as fantastic as a contemporary moral parable as say Michelangelo’s “Fall From Grace.” The latter work is a classic exposition of man’s fall and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. “Earth Angel” is laden with its own popish symbolism but has a similar ethos of some kind of tragic fall.
Earth Angel (Deux Ex Machina), oil on canvas, 60 3/4 x 46 1/2 in 3
Its symbols are deliciously obtuse with a deitylike winged figure, clothed in angelic robing (but with blue-jeaned legs in sneakers) teetering on stilts. Its globe-like head is crowned by a baseball cap and its eyes and mouth are more like a soulless Mr. Potato Head than divine. The stilts are balanced, though, upon drawn images of a crescent moon and sun and this subtle detail might suggest a clue to one level of meaning in this wildly imaginative painting. In Christian tradition these can represent the Virgin Mary and in mythology, the moon can represent virtue and the sun truth, or what Victor Hugo called “a
forerunner of surrealism. O’Connor’s work can be viewed as a similar rush of artistic fantasy and imaginative visual metaphor in reaction to a world that too often seems to be falling apart. Adding to what might be seen as morality tales, O’Connor has another body of work that just as obliquely can be viewed as didactic testaments concerning the socio-political conditions that surround him. In “When Johnny Comes Home” for example, O’Connor has created a vividly touching portrait of a young man — presumably a recent casualty of war — clothed only in overalls and angel wings, drifting slowly earthward through puffy clouds. His body (and very being) is convulsed with a grief that poignantly captures the universality of war’s utter tragedy and futility. The picture is as moving a visual antiwar panegyric as any in modern art. Sugarland, oil on board, 14 1/2 x 15 1/2 in
In O’Connor’s paintings, there is at work a meditative genius effectively exploiting the use of mystery, enigma, farce, irrationality, and wild juxtapositions of the familiar and the grotesque to make new demands on reality and viewer resonance. He aspires for his painting to be a “digging tool” with which he can explore and then share his take on the reality of things, even the reality “beyond ourselves” as the Steven’s poem says. His paintings nearly always succeed in honoring his desire that his work “eloquently and powerfully articulate the hopes and concerns, the fears and dreams that I have for myself, for my children and for our world.”
beautiful morality.” Around the painting’s deity, naked and near naked human figures tumble in free fall, toward a black dog that is a classic symbol of the devil and Hell. “Earth Angel” can certainly be read as a complex, modern-day parable of the loss of innocence, a contemporary epic whose images parody Michelangelo’s but whose message is just as serious: man is culpable for turning the idea of God into a hopeless Potato Head and his fall from grace is of his own doing. Knowing the artist’s role as a father and also as a politically active community organizer who has been involved with environmental, zoning, poverty, educational and water use causes, one can begin to understand how O’Connor’s work can be seen through the lens of response to a world full of injustice and conflict. In this regard one is reminded of the medieval painter Heironymous Bosch, whose renowned Garden of Earthly Delights and other fantastical spectacles of humanity’s feverish squandering of the virtues of human life have made him the most famous
His method liberates the inner working of the artistic subconscious and creates a new sensibility in which subtle messages can be conveyed with an authenticity and immediacy of meaning as compelling in visual terms as the most intensely moving poetry. O’Connor’s pictorial strategies may be grandly elusive and happily ahead of his time but the meanings that emerge are eternal and will be enduringly powerful a hundred years from now. 4
Kenneth R. Marvel
White Boys, oil on canvas, 50 x 50 in
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Petroglyph Park, oil on canvas, 67 1/4 x 111 in
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Hurry Up, oil on canvas, 66 1/2 x 30 1/2 in
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When Johnny Comes Home, oil on canvas, 64 1/2 x 26 in
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Idiot’s Prayer, oil on canvas, 61 1/4 x 31 1/2 in
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Hanging Man, oil on canvas, 57 1/4 x 35 1/2 in
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Garbage Pants Proletariat, oil on canvas, 62 x 28 3/4 in
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Born to Hide, oil on canvas, 14 x 18 in
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The Fool and the Maiden, oil on canvas, 62 x 20 3/4 in
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Brand New Bag, oil on canvas, 56 x 28 in
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The Messenger, oil on canvas, 37 1/2 x 49 in
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The Posthole Digger’s Wife Has No Wi-Fi, oil on canvas, 52 x 71 in
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Blank Page, oil on canvas, 56 1/2 x 40 1/2 in
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Study for the King’s Highway, oil on canvas, 19 x 12 in
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BRIAN O’CONNOR
Born: 1958
1998 1997 1994 1990
Education 2002 1983 1979
Certification in Computer Animation, TVI, Albuquerque, NM BFA, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM Centro Andino, Quito, Ecuador
Invitationals 2014 2012 2010 2007 2005 2004 2004 2004 2003 2003 2003 2003 2001 2001 1998
Grants & Fellowships 1990
WESTAF/NEA Painting Fellowship
Selected Solo Exhibitions 2015 2008 2008 2004 2004 2003 2002 2000 1999
LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Billy Shire Fine Arts, Culver City, CA Denise Roberge Gallery, Palm Desert, CA Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM La Luz de Jesus, Los Angeles, CA Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM La Luz de Jesus, Los Angeles, CA LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
For more than 30 years, acclaimed New Mexico painter Brian O’Connor has created phantasmal scenes of illusion and mystery. Fictional characters act out sociopolitical narratives of the somewhat absurd. With every brush stroke as a metaphor, his paintings become a language of emotion, memory, and ideas, rendering figures within a range of realism – from classical, to caricature, to cartoon. “O’Connor is a gifted realist painter whose increasingly dark vision continues to expand as he adds to his narrative of millennial observations.…What O’Connor does in his work is pose questions about our complicity with the forces of degradation that seem to increasingly govern our fate and compromise the quality of play and poetry of our children,” said critic Diane Armitage.
J. Cacciola Gallery, New York, NY LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
Harwood Museum, Taos, NM Albuquerque Museum of Art, Albuquerque, NM Albuquerque Museum of Art, Albuquerque, NM Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Billy Shire Fine Arts, Culver City, CA Gescheidle Gallery, Chicago, IL Diane Nelson Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Albuquerque Museum of Art, Albuquerque, NM New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM Sangre de Cristo Center for the Arts, Pueblo, CO Diane Nelson Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Billy Shire Fine Arts, Culver City, CA
O’Connor’s works are a kind of theater where the acts are played out simultaneously, the sequencing drawn out not through the medium, but through the imagination, memory and experiences of the viewer. 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,” says O’Connor about his creations. Receiving his BFA from the University of New Mexico, O’Connor went on to exhibit his paintings in galleries and museums nationally. He has taught at the University of New Mexico and put on various workshops and lectures for schools, universities, and art institutions. 19
Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com © 2015 LewAllen Contemporary LLC Artwork © Brian O’Connor