Helen O'Leary and the Messiness of Life
By Suzanne Wayne
Assistant Professor of Art and abstract painter Helen O'Leary grew up on a 100-acre farm in Ireland. The death of her father and her mother's illness forced her and her sister to manage the farm alone.
She
explains, "From the time I was 10 years old until I graduated
from high school, I would get up every morning and milk sixty
cows before school. While they were on the machines, I painted
every cow's head on the wall. When the wall was filled, I
would whitewash it, and start over again."
Those childhood lessons have not left O'Leary, who still marks the walls and floors of her studio along with her canvases. "The idea of muck and mire - now the filth of the studio and living - intrigues me," she says.
For O'Leary, the messiness of painting is a metaphor for the messiness of life: "I like the idea that painting is always a work in progress, much like life."
O'Leary's large canvases represent the residue of painting - the drips on the floor, the splatters on the artist's clothes, and the globs of paint on the palette - more than a great masterpiece.
"I am not interested in the big heroic gesture of painting that is typically male, but in the 'unsaidness' (in the creation of a painting). Every minute of the day contributes to a painting," says O'Leary.
Originally trained as a still life artist, O'Leary's transformation into an abstract painter began at the Art Institute of Chicago when the residue remaining after completing her still life images inspired her.
Likewise, she connects her interest in the residue to her Irish heritage: "I was brought up in a post-colonial country, and have experienced the residue left by the removal of a colonial power." Irish authors, particularly Joyce and Beckett, have also influenced her.
"I am intrigued by Joyce living in hotels in Europe all those years. He always expressed a desire for home to the people he met, yet he never went home. My image of home is like that, an imagined place that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is really made out of very small things," she says.
O'Leary, who has lived in the United States for twelve years, is currently studying ideas of dislocation and space. She states, "The studio is home." Testing this idea, she has actively sought visiting professor positions in Ireland, Spain, and Australia. She also plans to visit Thailand this summer.
She displays her artwork produced in each place together with photographs of her studio in that place to demonstrate this idea. She states about her experience, "Living outside your country allows you to be somewhat objective. There is strength in living somewhere else. You are not tied down by the conventions of home or of the place that you are visiting."
In addition to the visiting professorships, O'Leary has four solo exhibitions planned for this year in New York City; Perth, Australia; and Limerick and Cork, Ireland. She received the Joan Mitchell Award for Painting in 1999, a prestigious international award in which other artists nominate and select the winner.