bioartist statementcv
After receiving her art degree, Jane O'Hara's initial works were large scale cropped paintings of fruit and portraits composed with the subjects leaning on the edges of the picture plane. O'Hara's latest body of work reflects her fascination with animals, and here she continues to challenge the conventions of portraiture. These paintings capture the spirit of animals in contemporary life. Bold compositions and sensitive rendering are combined to exhibit the emotional depth of the animals she paints. O'Hara communicates her vision of the animal condition. The insensitivity, or conversely, the pampering and casting of human traits onto the animal, both disturb and intrigue her. She comments on these tendencies with humor and irony in her artwork. Viewers are initially drawn in by the comforting humor and beauty of O'Hara's fabricated worlds, but they are then challenged by the circumstances, and are delivered to her final intent—a world where her animals speak from a place of honesty about their state and humans' relationship to that. O'Hara's work is not only inspired by current events, but also by the work of several artists.
She counts among her most powerful influences Wayne Thiebaud, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Bosch, and contemporary artists Odd Nerdrum, Mark Ryden, Eric Fischl, Richard Long, John Currin and Michael Sowa. The influence of medieval religious icons and Pompeian frescoes is also evident.
In her recent show at Gallery 55 in Natick, MA, Chris Bergeron of Metro Daily West made these observations:
“For her first solo exhibit, she's showing 28 edgy, often provocative acrylic paintings of dogs, cats, elephants, rats, rabbits and pigs that subvert conventional approaches to art based on animals... She creates a distinctive sort of animal portrait by combining realistic and vaguely surreal elements. Her subjects look anatomically correct but subtly convey feelings of foreboding, vulnerability and solitude... Upon entering the gallery, visitors will see two straight-forward images of homeless dogs, Lying Dog and Red Ball, in which canine subjects rest in a state of continual alertness.
Nearby, O'Hara's two most ambitious works, Sacrifice and What a Circus, reveal a willingness to use unconventional formats to enhance her message... Painted on a 10-foot-wide canvas, What a Circus depicts two elephants balanced on small pedestals against a background of bright lights as if performing in a circus. What initially resembles another happy show under the Big Top becomes quite something else on closer inspection. The two mismatched elephants, a mother and her calf perhaps, gaze toward viewers with the melancholy eyes often seen in photos of suffering refugees...”
O'Hara began her art education in Greenwich, Connecticut, and then received a BFA in painting at Boston University in 1978. After graduation she moved to Los Angeles where she lived and painted for 5 years. While there, she immersed herself in the local art scene. Disparate influences such as Kitsch, Art Deco, pop culture and the abstracts of Diebenkorn expanded the parameters of her thinking about painting. After her years in LA, O'Hara returned to the east coast and continued portraiture, painted murals, and became involved with the decorative arts. She used the realistic training she received from BU for this, as well as to create a solid foundation for her studio work and portrait commissions.
O'Hara's work has been included in shows at Denise Bibro Fine Art, NYC, NY; Lankershim Gallery, LA, CA; Vose Gallery, Boston; Fuller Art Museum, Brockton, MA; Brickbottom Gallery, Somerville, MA; La Motta Fine Art, Hartford, CT and at a recent one-woman show at Gallery 55 in Natick, MA. Her paintings are owned by collectors Marcia and Bill Vose of Vose Gallery, Aerosmith's Tom Hamilton, Red Sox (now Dodgers) Manny Ramirez, medium John Holland, and The Peace Abbey in Sherbourn, MA. Her work is in private collections in Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Florida, Connecticut, Germany, and Pakistan.
Born in 1955, O'Hara grew up in the suburbs of New York City in Connecticut. Her parents were world travelers—one an artist. Exposing their children to culture was a priority and O'Hara frequented the art museums of NYC throughout her early life. She started drawing while young and by age 11 was taking oil painting lessons from local artist Claudine Hurwitz. In Greenwich, against a backdrop of money, excess, and a country club culture concerned with image, O'Hara was aware of the distance between what she experienced and what was expected of her. Growing up with the honest relationship of her mentally handicapped brother and of her dogs, she gained a respect for communication beyond social surfaces and words. This idea she carries forward with her paintings today. Her animals confront and challenge the viewer to question stereotypical responses to their images. She places them in unusual compositions with landscapes that invoke unease and questions, sometimes humor and joy. O'Hara has a love of color and design. She works with oil, acrylics, metal leaf, Venetian plaster, graphite powder and oil stick on traditional and non-traditional surfaces such as screens, banners, woodblocks, canvas, glass plates, wooden bowls and mouse pads, to create the worlds her animals occupy.
O'Hara currently lives and works in Little Compton, RI and Boston, MA with her husband, painter Gedas Paskauskas. It was in Little Compton that she first included animals in her landscapes; they made their way into her paintings and never left. The country and wildlife provide her with inspiration and materials for her art, and it is here, as well as Fenway Studios in Boston, where O'Hara happily creates her animal worlds and portrait commissions.