“…It is the task of the viewer to remember abstraction with these paintings, but it is the task of the artist to reinvent the abstract pictorial format. With these delicate pictures, paradoxically made of metal, Tom O’Neil does exactly that. There are other artists using copper and steel grounds – most prominently Robert Rauschenberg – but to different ends. O’Neil doesn’t attempt to complicate our visual field, but rather to surprise the eye with these metallic surfaces poised against the skins of paint, the sometimes scumbled surface, and the small square formats that never seem precious. As the metallic ground surfaces, we understand the edginess of the status of the artist in the world, as well as the discomfort of a painting style that insists upon a process-derived abstraction and find in the best of Tom O’Neil’s paintings.”
Michael Plante
Jessie J. Poesch Professor of Art History
Tulane University,
