"If I Still"
This series of work deals with both the physical act of reaching a destination and the emotional journey toward the revelation that ensued. While both paintings are quite different, they evoke the same destination both figuratively and metaphorically. I was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1975. I spent my childhood, teenage years and early adult life there before moving to Baltimore, Maryland in 2003. I have been in the United States ever since. In 2013 I lost my mother to ovarian cancer. The lost was devastating. Before she passed, I had given up painting to focus on video and installation work. She had always loved my painting.
In 2014 I began painting again and as the work developed, I began to realize that these new acrylics on raw canvas were infused with a deep sense of nostalgia for home. The works submitted here are recent works that came out of a trip to Dublin in 2021. "In the Fields" and "As Brightness Reaches" evoke the memory of a walk I took in the Dublin mountains. I had arrived home in the middle of the COVID pandemic, and my father was very ill. In the field behind our family home, I came across a small pond where I used to catch tadpoles as a child. In my memory this pond was grand, almost a lake, but as I stood by it then it seemed more like a puddle. I left the field and walked down the Kellystown Road. I was greeted by the most glorious late spring sunset spilling over the mountain towards the city on the horizon. I felt my mother’s presence like I had not since after she had passed. My arrival home brought about a new arrival, a revelation of sorts. She was still here, and she always will be, dad was going to be ok even when his time came. He passed later that year.
Medium: "In the Fields" - Acrylic on Raw Canvas Stretched Over Panel Framed; "As Brightness Reaches" - Acrylic on Raw Canvas Framed
Bart O’Reilly is an Irish poet and painter based in Maryland, USA. He teaches at The John Carroll High School in Bel Air Maryland and has shown work in Baltimore, Washington DC, Philadelphia and Kentucky as well as in Ireland and Northern Ireland. In 2000 he received his BFA from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. He got his MFA from The Maryland Institute College of Art in 2012 where he was presented with MICA’s MFAST award upon graduation. He is also the recipient of grants from The Baltimore Social Innovation Journal and an Individual Artists Award from The Baltimore Office of Promotions of the Arts for his work with artists with disabilities. In 2022 he published his first book My Father’s Work Shed with Resource Publications. It is a collection of poetry and painting spanning 11 years of work.
