Description
Bart O’Reilly’s practice begins with structure. Working on multiple canvases simultaneously, he establishes sequences that foreground considerations of scale, layering, color, and surface absorbency. These early decisions create a framework through which each series develops with intention and discipline.
As the work progresses, this structure gradually loosens. Repetition becomes intuitive and responsive, allowing associations to emerge organically. Fields of paint begin to suggest landscapes, bodies, or emotional states without settling into fixed imagery. Built deliberately and often slowly, the paintings remain attentive to how light interacts with their surfaces. For O’Reilly, a work succeeds not when it feels resolved, but when it remains active—open, shifting, and alive.
In O’Reilly’s words:
I dreamt I comprehended the enormity of all the stars in the universe through slivers in a basement window.
Years like the oceans, are bigger than us.
I was born looking West
Phototropism towards the setting sun
Settled me here.
Now I navigate a world
Slick full of oil memories
And her lifetime, my eternity.
Connemara’s poet
Over a stone wall
Between two steams
Writing of estuaries.
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