don't back down, 2016, oil on canvas, 66 x 66 inches

Fran O’Neill: moving through

ON VIEW: March 18 – May 31, 2017

OPENING RECEPTION: March 18, 6-9 PM

Brooklyn-based artist Fran O’Neill creates vibrant, swirling paintings in myriad, intensely hued colors. While O’Neill pays homage to the great abstract painters of the 20th century, her aesthetic is also based on personal experience. She utilizes unexpected moments from her past as the jumping off point for artistic explorations that look to recreate her perceptions rather than actual events. Movement—of the hand, brush, and paint—is integral to O’Neill’s work, as evidenced by her gestural style and the kinetic energy she captures on the canvas.

Fran O’Neill, born in Wangaratta, Australia, O'Neill attended Monash University, earning a BFA. Her post-graduate work was at the New York Studio School's Certificate Program, and her MFA was completed at Brooklyn College in 2012. In 2007 she received a Joan Mitchell Foundation award. O’Neill’s solo exhibitions include Life on Mars Gallery; Brooklyn, NY, John Davis Gallery, NY; New York Studio School, NY; and Sussex College, Hastings, UK. Her work has been included in various group shows throughout the United States and in Australia, most recently at MOCA in Jacksonville, FL in the exhibition entitled Confronting the Canvas: Women of Abstraction. She has taught at the New York Studio School, Arts Students League and Pratt Institute. Her work resides in private collections in the USA, Australia and UK, and is in the collection of MOCA Jacksonville, FL.