Robyn O’Neil
08 Jun - 23 Jul 2006
ROBYN O'NEIL
"As They Fall"
Robyn O’Neil leads us into a landscape at once familiar and alienating. Far-reaching vistas, snow bound vignettes, and unlimited oceans remind us travel journals or perhaps recalled children’s books. At the same time we recognize that this is nature at its least welcoming. These epic landscape drawings could be read as filmic scenes, altar paintings or biblical parables due to their scale and ambition. The works suggest a pre- or post-apocalyptic scene. Yet, the curious and intriguing aspect of these drawings is, in fact, their total ambiguity.
Using a standard mechanical pencil HB lead on white paper, O’Neil constructs these intimate compositions with the economic precision of a predella.
Like Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Breughel before her, Robyn O’Neil in her richly populated drawings is preoccupied with the spiritual and moral questions of our time. O’Neil’s work has become known for its penetrating yet metaphorical exploration of such dark themes as the apocalypse, evolution, mass disaster, and extinction. Death has always been part and parcel of O’Neil’s various themes, but in her more recent works, death itself has become the driving allegorical force.
The protagonists of O’Neil’s meticulous landscapes are often middle-age men wearing track suits and sneakers as an archetypal representation of “human-ness” rather than specific individuals. At the same time O’Neil’s drawings depict nature both as majestic and as victim of man. But in her more recent works it seems that this is more man who is the victim of the nature, like overwhelmed and lost in the immensity of landscape.
For O’Neil the absolute does not lie in pure abstraction; she freely alludes to the history of art, popular culture, and, perhaps more indirectly, current events throughout her compositions.
"As They Fall"
Robyn O’Neil leads us into a landscape at once familiar and alienating. Far-reaching vistas, snow bound vignettes, and unlimited oceans remind us travel journals or perhaps recalled children’s books. At the same time we recognize that this is nature at its least welcoming. These epic landscape drawings could be read as filmic scenes, altar paintings or biblical parables due to their scale and ambition. The works suggest a pre- or post-apocalyptic scene. Yet, the curious and intriguing aspect of these drawings is, in fact, their total ambiguity.
Using a standard mechanical pencil HB lead on white paper, O’Neil constructs these intimate compositions with the economic precision of a predella.
Like Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Breughel before her, Robyn O’Neil in her richly populated drawings is preoccupied with the spiritual and moral questions of our time. O’Neil’s work has become known for its penetrating yet metaphorical exploration of such dark themes as the apocalypse, evolution, mass disaster, and extinction. Death has always been part and parcel of O’Neil’s various themes, but in her more recent works, death itself has become the driving allegorical force.
The protagonists of O’Neil’s meticulous landscapes are often middle-age men wearing track suits and sneakers as an archetypal representation of “human-ness” rather than specific individuals. At the same time O’Neil’s drawings depict nature both as majestic and as victim of man. But in her more recent works it seems that this is more man who is the victim of the nature, like overwhelmed and lost in the immensity of landscape.
For O’Neil the absolute does not lie in pure abstraction; she freely alludes to the history of art, popular culture, and, perhaps more indirectly, current events throughout her compositions.