309:, an educator and sculptor, founded the college in 1984. She returned to the United States, living in New York for a year while renting a studio in Brooklyn, before she accepted an appointment as Assistant Professor at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle in 1996. In 2002, O'Toole gave birth to a daughter, Lydia, and accepted an Associate Professor position at UW; she was appointed Professor and Chair of the Painting and Drawing Program in 2014. She has also taught at the university's Studio Art Program in Rome in 1999 and 2004.
389:(1992), O'Toole created atmospheric expanses and pictorial incident through washes, drips, spills, gesture and texture. Some early reviewers suggested the level of painterly incident could have been pared down; others, such as James Yood, affirmed what he termed the "seething ebb and flow of the forces of color" and precarious, "nervous balance of pictorial forces." In the late 1990s, O'Toole turned to a more deliberative process of working wet-on-wet layers of paint that she scraped and scumbled (e.g.,
334:(2013), for example, are often compared to those of early 19th-century painter J. M. W. Turnerâknown for his luminous, atmospheric and turbulent landscapes that border on abstractionâand those of 20th-century abstract artist Mark Rothko, known for monumental, contemplative color field paintings. Writers also liken her work to the subjective, late landscapes of
421:, 2007) enabled her to explore scale, space and the geometry of the rectangle with regard to color, light and form in a different way. Since 2013, O'Toole has focused on a series of epic-scaled paintings that probe the socio-mythical expressions of her ancestors and the ways in which they were molded by the land; the series includes works such as
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discuss her work as existing on the cusp between abstract and figurative and being rooted in observable facts that are "summoned only to dissolve." Critics compare her painting to art spanning almost two centuries, suggesting qualities of both historical consciousness and contemporaneity; representative works such as
393:, 2000)âoften over several yearsâin a manner sometimes compared to the measured work of farming. O'Toole herself has said, "The paintings are built slowly, made in layers, with a similar measure to working the soil, revealing the strata of the bog, negotiating clumsy, crusty limestone fields at a deliberate pace."
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In addition to her paintings, O'Toole has worked on small-scale, mixed media (including oil and watercolor) works on paper in her career. This work was exhibited on its own in a 2007 Linenhall Arts Centre solo show titled "Beag" ("Small") featuring 32 works on paper of six to fourteen inches. O'Toole
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Despite the abstract nature of O'Toole's workâand her early attempts to dispel associations with landscape, in part, by working verticallyâwriters (in
Ireland and elsewhere) have consistently described her work as "distilling the essence" of the experiences, history, and terrain of her native region.
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O'Toole's handling of light, color and paint achieves what critics often call an "elliptical" quality in her work, a ruminative cycle that viewers are drawn into, moving from hazy, shifting layers, minimal forms and murky, muted passages of color to painterly surface texture to the compositions as a
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Salli McQuaid characterized her work as moody and intense with an "undercurrent of dark passion and superstition" common to Irish culture; Bonnie Laing-Malcomson writes that O'Toole "channels the deep-seated pain and misery of the past into such beauty that it elicits a sense of redemption." Author
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O'Toole has been recognized with fellowships from the
Guggenheim Foundation (Fine Arts, 2016), Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2013) and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1989); a Contemporary Northwest Art Award (one of eight given by the Portland Art Museum, 2016); and Jack and Grace Pruzan
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Critical considerations of O'Toole's work have often focused on her longstanding engagement with place and landscape through abstraction. Early reviews describe her "nature-derived abstraction" as displaying an
Abstract-Expressionist "sense of natural flux"; writers two and three decades later
282:, and began showing widely in universities and museums, and at Sazama Gallery in Chicago, which held her first solo show in 1991. In subsequent years, she has had solo exhibitions at the Chicago Cultural Center (1994), the Sligo Art Gallery (1999),
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Residency
Programme in Annaghmakerrig, Ireland (both 1992). Her work has been acquired by many private collections, as well as those of the Portland Art Museum, the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and the Institute of Technology, Sligo.
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Endowed
Faculty Fellowships (2009-2012, 2013- 2015) and Milliman Endowment Fund awards (2007â13) from the University of Washington, among others. She has also received artist residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (1991), the
867:, an Exhibition to Commemorate the Conferment of the Meritorious Service Medal on Brother Joseph McNally for His Outstanding Achievements as an Artist, Cultural Activist and Educator, National Arts Council: Singapore Art Museum, 1998, p. 16.
123:(born 1963) is an Irish-born painter based in the United States, who is known for abstract paintings suggestive of landscape. She has exhibited throughout Ireland and the United States, in Singapore, and at venues including the
409:(2016â8) enables viewers to enter into what some have called a "meteorological-psychological space" in which they may perceive encoded emotions, implied metaphors and layered allusions to place, history and legend.
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suggests that she invokes, by suggestion and technique, the rich textures and starkly contrasting colors of a "barren, craggy land, battered by wind and rain and overshadowed by an everchanging sky."
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Critics note, however, that O'Toole realizes those qualities less by an engagement with observed reality or specific narrative than through the potentialities of paint, worked in a manner that
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reviewer Alan Artner identified as a "kind of spiritual quest" similar to that of early abstract modernists. Others have described her process as a never-resolved battle or, in
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of the spirit"; curator Bonnie Laing-Malcomson suggests her "richly colored monumental paintings evoke the moody landscape of her rural Irish homeland, summoning the force of
381:'s words, an attempt at "approaching the sublimeâanother worldâthrough personal struggle with materials capable of, but resisting, being controlled." In early works, such as
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critic James Yood wrote, "echoing the often inchoate quality of nature, her paint surges toward mystery and hints at a kind of
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290:(2014) in Ireland, and Linda Hodges Gallery (Seattle, 2000â2013), among others. Her work has also been featured at the
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186:, and National Public Radio. Art writers frequently discuss the interplay in her work between
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Linenhall Arts Centre. Exhibition materials, Castlebar, Ireland: Linenhall Arts Centre, 2007.
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Teevan, Colin. "New
Paintings," Exhibition brochure, Chicago: Sazama Gallery, September 1992.
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908:, Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1987, p. 69. Retrieved 19 February 2019.
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233:, oil on canvas (diptych), 100" x 156", 2013. Portland Art Museum Collection.
266:. In 1987, she moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies at the
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1167:, Large Paintings 2013â2018, Official website. Retrieved 19 February 2019.
1152:, Large Paintings 2013â2018, Official website. Retrieved 19 February 2019.
1137:, Large Paintings 2013â2018, Official website. Retrieved 19 February 2019.
1094:, Large Paintings 2013â2018, Official website. Retrieved 19 February 2019.
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Wind of the Spirit: A Retrospective
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270:(MFA, Painting, 1989); that same year she received a scholarship to the
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544:, Exhibition brochure. Sligo, Ireland: Sligo Art Gallery, August 1999.
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in
Singapore in 1993, where she was a lecturer until 1995; her uncle,
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Artner, Alan G. "Two more
Chicago painters are guided by the light,"
1024:, Paintings 1990â1999, Official website. Retrieved 19 February 2019.
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in Fine Arts, a Contemporary Northwest Art Award (both 2016), and a
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274:. In 1990, she was featured in "The Chicago Show" sponsored by the
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University of Washington, School of Art + Art History + Design.
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Dunne, Aidan. "Art Student vision and the restorer's art,"
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in the rural west of Ireland in 1963. She attended the
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Moehl, Karl. "Contemporary Visual Art Invitational,"
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has said that these small-scale works (for example,
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Portland Art Museum Artist Feature on Helen O'Toole
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587:Hixson, Kathryn. "Chicago in Review,"
514:Contemporary Northwest Art Awards 2016
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429:(both 2015), and the larger paintings
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448:Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts
294:Gallery, Portland Art Museum, and
280:Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
252:National College of Art and Design
206:." She has been recognized with a
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62:National College of Art and Design
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661:Ewart, Mark. "Living Landscape,"
365:, oil on canvas, 79" x 60", 2000.
320:, oil on canvas, 98" x 82", 1992.
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564:"Helen O'Toole, Sazama Gallery,"
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792:, Vol. 57, Issue 3, 2000.
683:Hackett, Regina. Review,
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1272:Artists from County Mayo
542:Helen O'Toole: Paintings
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332:Mary Larkin's Bottom
242:O'Toole was born in
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121:Helen O'Toole
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113:Helen O'Toole
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25:Helen O'Toole
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1191:The Advocate
1190:
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1037:, June 1986.
1034:
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993:
988:
980:
956:
936:
921:, June 1986.
919:Sunday Press
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913:
904:
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890:
885:
877:
872:
864:
859:
851:
847:Ryan, Ăine.
843:
838:, June 1986.
835:
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825:, June 1986.
822:
817:
809:
790:Communique 6
789:
737:
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692:
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591:, June 1991.
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352:Colin Teevan
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18:
1242:1963 births
1091:To Remember
423:To Remember
405:(2015), or
403:To Remember
385:(1991) and
286:(2007) and
244:County Mayo
204:Mark Rothko
196:chiaroscuro
188:abstraction
46:Nationality
38:County Mayo
1236:Categories
1149:Everywhere
459:References
431:Everywhere
417:, 2001 or
260:Asger Jorn
852:Mayo News
80:education
54:Education
40:, Ireland
1021:Pungence
567:Artforum
407:Gan Ainm
401:(2013),
383:Pungence
278:and the
250:and the
192:Artforum
146:Artforum
89:Abstract
72:Painting
626:Zyzzyva
377:critic
216:Seattle
165:Zyzzyva
109:Website
76:drawing
292:SFMOMA
262:, and
139:, and
94:Awards
1134:Going
427:Going
415:Cross
104:Award
86:Style
49:Irish
425:and
325:Work
202:and
162:and
31:Born
1238::
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346:.
298:.
258:,
222:.
180:,
155:,
149:,
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100:,
78:,
74:,
60:,
173:,
160:,
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