Geraldine O’ Neill

Geraldine O’Neill has long responded to the increasing confrontation with human engagement and relationship with the ecosystem, in particular the Anthropocene whose traces are now embedded within the geological layers of the Earth’s structure. She-makes what she calls “Slow Art” mostly painting but sometimes expanded paint, sculpture and print using traditional materials that is counter cultural to this fast paced disposable world that we now inhabit.

With her distinctive painterly approach she makes many layered and often very large compositions that quote past masters such as Patinir, Breugal, but she also appropriates new images, collected and gathered of the overlooked and fragmented, scientific formula and its diagrams and children’s drawings devising her own distinctive visual language. Found objects also feature such as the delicate stilled bird cadavers, gathered by care and gifted to O’Neill. All these elements reach across time  and space and feature in her robustly crafted multiverses.

“At the core of my work is a message that decay is inevitable, our time limited and our fragility exposed. Included in my compositions are dead songbirds, diagrams, picked flowers, weeds and images of the detritus of our world, which refer to our futile attempts  to control nature while drawing attention to the destructive impact of human activity ; never before has nature so much needed to be sheltered from us. As a parent I address the role of protector with a sense of foreboding - I portray my children as often unwilling or slightly disconnected subjects placed within my fantasy worlds where space and reality contradict each other playfully yet menacingly. Focussing on their vulnerability and innocence, they are the centre of my universe and I paint to affirm that I can shelter and protect them all the while knowing that so much is beyond my control.”