ABOUT

Brian O'Leary
917 859-5179
roxystudio@mindspring.com

Formal Education:
B.A. Duke University 1977
School of Visual Arts 1980-82

Artistic highlights:

1978 Travels through Europe and Morocco, meets artists for first time
1980 Begins study at SVA with teachers: Don Eddy, Michael Goldberg, Bruce Boice, Jeff Lew, Alice Aycock, Susan Ginsburg, Chris Gianokos, among others
1981 Works with Robert Rauschenberg in Captiva
1982 Leases Loft at 354 Bowery
1984 One man show Visual Arts Gallery
1984 Assistant to Julian Schnabel
1984 Assists Roy Lichtenstein on Greene Street Mural
1985 Assistant to Roy on Equitable mural
1986 One man show Ramscale Gallery NYC
1987 Awarded Painting prize American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
1988 One man show Ramscale Gallery NYC
1989 Painting fellowship La Napoule Institute, France.
1989 Assists Roy on Tel Aviv mural
1990 One man show Ramscale Gallery NYC
1999 Begins work on black and white, completely abstract paintings
2001 One man show Lana Jokel Space NYC
2009 Miami Mural installation
2010 One Man show Sarah Nightingale Gallery
2013 One Man Show 4 North Main Gallery Southampton
2018 Awarded Pollock Krasner Grant
2018 Installs San Diego Mural
2019 Berliniche Galerie Modern Kunste group show
2021 One Man Show M&M Gallery
2022 Retrospective M&M Gallery

Personal Thoughts

I have been an artist since 1982. I met my first artist when I went to France in 1978 at 23 years old. As a child, I drew obsessively and sold my first artwork in 3rd grade for 15 cents. It was a drawing of WWII air combat, out of my mind's eye, while being bored  silly in class.  I was strongly discouraged to be an artist while a student at Scarsdale High School and Duke University. In France in 1978  I met a group of artists and went to the hills of Provence to draw with them.  A light bulb lit up, I enrolled at the School of Visual Arts when I returned to America.  I cannot say enough how great a school SVA was for me.

I was lucky enough to have known Roy Lichtenstein since 1980. I was already somewhat acquainted, as he was a customer at 1/5th, a famous restaurant in the village where I worked as a captain, always making sure to serve his table. I was dating one of my teachers at SVA, Susan Ginsburg, an art historian and a friend of Roy and his wife Dorothy.  Susan brought me along to their house in Southampton for a weekend. Roy loved nothing more than a good laugh. He may have liked my sense of humor, and I was  asked back. In 1984 I was on Roy's team when Leo Castelli commissioned him to do a large mural at his gallery on Greene Street. I also worked on murals he did in Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and at the Equitable Building on 53rd and 7th Ave. 

On one occasion of a meal with Roy he mentioned his time teaching at SUNY Oswego.  While he did not miss the logistics of semesters and classrooms he did miss teaching young students.  I wrote him a letter (no internet then) to say I would like him to teach me.  He responded immediately and came to my studio two days later.  He hardly looked at my work but sat me down and taught me his essential lesson of art.  It was a complex lesson that I took as an oracle.  I applied myself to understanding its meaning.  Several months later he returned to see my work and he was pleased.  He told our mutual friend Susan Ginsburg that I was the first person to understand the lesson.  That was a great confidence boost at a time when I felt like I was banging my head against the wall as an artist.

That lesson is a foundation for me. Essentially, the lesson is that there is a plane of art, something like a metaphysical plane, that locks into place when a painting is “right”.  You can train your eye to see that plane, and trust yourself to make it right. Even when I think I’ve completed a work I keep looking, I might see something not on that plane. 

Roy’s “Lesson” links all art together, I believe. Musicians, sculptors, writers, architects, etc. have analogous planes in their works. This concept makes anything possible for an artist.  For one thing,  abstraction and Representation can coincide if that plane is “intact”.

I have a hard time with this familiar question, "What kind of artist are you?" or the  more absurd "Are you a contemporary Artist?”  I am primarily a painter, but also a sculptor, photographer, furniture maker, and I have redesigned and rebuilt ten  buildings. Having  multifaceted means to express myself seems completely natural.  

Looking back on my life as a painter, I am an abstract and representational artist. I see them as the two stakes in the ground of Modern Art. Do I have to choose? I spent years doing representative work and other years doing abstract work.  I want them combined into a cohesive expression.  I like to think that abstraction is the music, representation is the song. Musicians have no problem figuring that out.

I hope the paintings are mysterious and strange.  If an observer is unsure what they are looking at that would be fine to me.

Narrative by Sita Kadash

Brian O’Leary was born in Manhattan, the second of five sons to Irish immigrants. He has been painting professionally since 1982.  The School of Visual Arts experience, and working  alongside Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenburg, and Julian Schnable in the 1980’s helped him cultivate lifelong lessons, techniques, and an eye for his unique expression. Now the intricate, interwoven artworks created by O'Leary are examples of developed and elaborate craftsmanship. The more one dives into the intricacies of his creations, the more the apparent geometry and movement seamlessly align. Each painting reveals a world of complex shapes, patterns, textures, values, natural hues, and colors.

O'Leary's artistic prowess, evident in these paintings, is characterized by a commitment to make works that resemble no other artists’ work.  To begin with, every painting begins with the notion that he is like a 12 year old child with a gallon of paint in his hand, applying tar and paint with enthusiasm and joy.  That is the only plan at first,  but soon things start to occur, space arrives, objects appear, things happen that he could not have pre-conceived.  Over the ensuing hours and a sequence of constructions and destructions, the possibility of meaning arises, to keep or dismiss. Sometimes a painting is finished and then it’s not finished.  Never be afraid to remove anything in a painting.  Picasso said a painting is much more a series of destructions than constructions, and that one can never take anything out of a painting.

O’Leary’s use of tar with oil paint results in paintings of raw strength and light.  The figurative elements, while bearing little resemblance to realism, feel right in their place and provoke unusual interpretation, often a layering of dualities. The composition is rarely dependent on reality or gravity although O’Leary does acknowledge the influence of the city landscape, specifically south of 14th street.   

Playing with the elements of his paintings Brian uses the chemical interaction of tar and white oil paint, from almost white to almost black but perfectly in the same hue, producing authentic depth of space and shading. Many of the paintings have tiny patches of primary color that electrify the space around them.  The finished pieces have an attractive crudeness and strength.

A profound shift in O'Leary's creative purpose occurred with the death of his brother in 2022, leading to a reclamation and grieving of his own mortality.  Some of the recent paintings, like “Crossing Over” and “Saab for Kevin”, both from 2023, are unambiguous eulogies to his great friend of 60 years. .

An astute eye for composition and oneness sets O'Leary apart. His natural afinity for complex forms, visions, and dreamlike images invites viewers on a contemplative journey through his artistic realm. In each stroke and hue, O'Leary strives to confront the core of our selves, challenging our preconceptions and interpretation of our complex world.