Jenkins Johnson Gallery presents Mary Lovelace O’Neal Frozen in Time, a solo presentation of 7 x 5 foot paintings from the artist’s personal collection made in the late 1980s through 1990s. The exhibition is accompanied by an artist publication available for purchase with images of 11 paintings and essay by Allan M Gordon, Professor Emeritus of Art History at the California State University of Sacramento. Lovelace O’Neal (b. 1942, Jackson, Mississippi) is acclaimed for merging the painterly and gestural elements of Abstract Expressionism with the political and cultural consciousness of the civil rights and Black Arts movements in her work.
Lovelace O’Neal is a painter, printmaker, educator, and storyteller. A revolutionary figure in abstraction since the 1970s, her work has roots in Minimalism and Expressionism. Her powerful compositions then expanded to reference real imagery, varying between pure abstraction and narrative figuration, that mingle personal narratives, mythologies, and social issues. These works employ vibrant hues and a generous and masterful application of paint.
Throughout the works, Lovelace O’Neal exceeds expectations of abstraction using a both harmonious and non-harmonies palette to represent abstract and figurative shapes. Lovelace O’Neal’s sense of abstraction and creativity goes beyond what the eye can see in her paintings. In her artist statement, she shares a blunt reflection on the obsessive minutia of art world norms.
“At 81 years old, one of the most vexing things in my work life is the persistent questions and pestering of me regarding the dates concerning a work, or a group of works […] I have often given in to the temptation to make up a date and a new title, anything and any way of getting them to depart my space.”
Lovelace O’Neal’s compositions, and the context of their creation from raw canvas to the wall, does not shy away from complication. Alan Gordon, Professor Emeritus of Art History at the California State University of Sacramento, writes of Lovelace O’Neal’s work,
“It is the Abstract Expressionism phenom being bent, twisted, and reshaped to serve Lovelace O’Neal’s needs which gives her the freedom to invent, revise, create and recreate her inner most feelings—to give visible form to what cannot be seen but only felt.”
Lovelace O’Neal’s work is in collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art; DeYoung Museum; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Joyner/Giuffrida Collection. Recent exhibitions include Revisiting 5+1 at Stony Brook University’s Zuccaire Gallery and Afterimages: Echoes of the 1960s from the Fisher and SFMOMA Collections at SFMoMA. She has an MFA from Columbia University and a BFA from Howard University. In 2022 Lovelace O’Neal was honored at the On the Edge gala at the de Young Museum, and she was a recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Award and the Mississippi Arts Commission Governor’s Arts Awards.