O’Neill’s recent work aims to achieve a complete sense of abandonment. Painted using her arms and hands, the luscious swirling marks are literally the result of the intuitive movement of her body across the surface.
Limited palettes, silvers, gold’s, deep Indian reds with stark black and whites, touches of turquoise and a transparent gold orange, hint at the earthly pigments of her homeland Australia. Striations and rhythms make this particular body of work surprising in the twists and turns that the surface of the painting takes on. Colliding and caressing marks are often washed away to reveal the saturation and the essence of the paint. At once dense and vibrant; intimate and grand, these paintings are an accumulation of spontaneous actions traveling through her body in response to changing moods and environments, all occurring beneath her conscious mind.
BIO
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. Fran works from studios in both New York and Melbourne and is considered an important figure within gestural abstraction. Her work is included in major international collections such as MoCA in the United States.
