Catharine O’Neill

For many years in different ways, I have been making art. In summers during my high school and university years, I studied at art schools. While in graduate school and for a decade after, I wrote and drew magazine and newspaper cartoons. Later and for many years, I drew and painted in colour while writing and illustrating children’s books.

Oil painting is something I began five or six years ago. This has made possible a more spontaneous way of painting. In oils, colours can be tried out and painted over until the right solution is found. I am finding this much more fun than painting with watercolours. Although there were often happy serendipitous moments, watercolours are harder to change once put down on paper.

What to paint when there is no text? Anything can be imagined in colours and shapes that reveal the strangeness and beauty in the world. For awhile I have been painting figures as part of interior or landscape paintings. The interpretation of a figure requires a bit more logical consistency than a hillside of trees or a bouquet of flowers. It’s challenging to me. How many times can one change the arch of an eyebrow? But, when it works, very satisfying. I hope to paint more pictures with narratives, people not posing or still but doing things. More like cartoons and children’s books.