88 Upper Pratt Pond Road, New Ipswich. I love the process of painting...the sensuous feel of placing paint on the canvas, the surprise of seeing how my visual or inner images translate to the two dimensional surface...the delight of seeing what happens when I put one color next to another...the intrigue of making all these elements work together to create a vital painting.
Video created by Bruce Barlow ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John O'Brien, abstract painter.
88 Upper Pratt Pond Road, New Ipswich.
My paintings are an energetic dance of texture, color, shape, emotion and belief. Their framework is that of constant experimentation that interacts with my internal landscape.
I paint from visual memories, recalling the emotional impact of a particular moment in time. I use encaustic, oils, bee's wax, and oil pastels on paper, archival panels and wood blocks. The paint is applied with a palette knife, rags and fingers; then the surface is sanded, scrapes, and reworked.
My art takes shape as welded metal sculptural representations of the world I live in, real and imagined. The shadows I recognize and transform into sculpture are those I see in the material I choose to work -steel- in the form of plate, bar, tube, and angle, as well as ready-made found objects.
As a watercolorist, I love painting landscapes and seascapes. As I use colored pencils, I am drawn to the subtlety of light and shadow in flowers and still life.
