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FRAN O’NEILL: LEFT TURN
by Benjamin LaRocco
I love the idea of taking a line for a walk. It creates a very evocative image in my mind. Elaborating on his ingenious coinage, Paul Klee wrote:
“An active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal. A walk for a walk’s sake. The mobility agent is a point, shifting its position forward.”
Klee’s attribution of agency to the point is noteworthy, shifting emphasis away from the creator toward the creation. Where might this line of thought lead us in making a painting? I am provoked into this consideration by several of Fran O’Neill’s new paintings “shape of things” and “low hang.”
“shape of things” (70x100 inches, oil on canvas, 2022) runs a swirling gamut of yellows, greens, pinks and chromatic grays on its way between dominant keys of orange and purple. The swirl is O’Neill’s signature movement of a flat brush through thin, wet oil paint over large swaths of canvas. The movement routinely doubles back on itself until it fills the field. The line here, as in all O’Neill’s canvases, is recursive, conforming as it moves to the parameters of speed and scale initiated in its coming into being.
Back to the point (pun intended) and its agency. If we think of the point as the place of contact between brush and canvas, O’Neill’s walk is then a long one following a path that is not predetermined but consistent in its rhythm: a stroll. True to Klee, I sense no agenda for the painted lines pushed and pulled through space, encouraging the impression that the walk is the point (self-referentiality). The joy of a walk always resides in its essential self-sufficiency. “low hang” (70x100 inches,oil on canvas, 2022) further teases out the trajectory of O’Neill’s line. The title for this work conjures shades of Eva Hesse’s “Hang Up.” A tangle of white and black lines at its center, hanging out playfully from its environment, further underscores the comparison. Though it is tempting, due to methodological similarities, to make analogy between O’Neill’s work and that of painter Karin Davie, an element of predetermination in the latter’s gesture often seems to declare itself, setting Davie’s work on a different course from that of O’Neill. I feel more comfortable following O’Neill’s line, like Klee’s self-directed point, toward Hesse’s indeterminate, three-dimensional space.
Though she spends time in New York, O’Neill lives and paints primarily in her native Australia, a land I know mainly through Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines. What the book might lack in contemporary references, it makes up for in romantic depth and I envision O’Neill’s lines moving through just that space. Though I don’t wish to suggest that O’Neill’s painterly line walks an Aboriginal Songline, it does seem that the rhythmic charting of linear movement through vast open spaces might be a priority O’Neill’s painting shares with Australia’s earliest culture.
ABOUT FRAN
An Australian-American, Fran O’Neill, was born in Wangaratta, Australia, and currently lives and works between Australia and Brooklyn, New York. O'Neill attended Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, earning a BFA and Post Graduate Degree. Her post-graduate work continued at the New York Studio School's Certificate Program, and her MFA was completed at Brooklyn College. She has received a Joan Mitchell Foundation award. O’Neill’s solo exhibitions include at: Sears Peyton Gallery, NYC; Hathaway Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; West End Gallery, Melbourne, Australia; David Schweitzer Contemporary, Bushwick, NY; Miller Gallery, Cincinnati, OH; BMG Gallery, Adelaide, Australia; TW Fine Art, Brisbane, Australia; Life on Mars Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, John Davis Gallery, NY; New York Studio School, NY; and Sussex College, Hastings, UK. In 2016 her work was exhibited at MOCA in Jacksonville, FL in a group exhibition titled Confronting the Canvas: Women of Abstraction, and most recently her work was included in Vital Presence, curated by David Cohen at 1GAPGallery, in Brooklyn. O’Neill’s work has been included in various group shows throughout the USA and in Australia. She has recently 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 in the permanent collection of MOCA Jacksonville, FL.