Artists Biography
Liam O'Neill
Liam O Neill is a self taught painter. His rich palette knife, textures and strong colours delineate the characters of his subjects while also capturing true like images. Liam was born in Corca Duibhne in 1954. His real training came from experience, living as a boy in West Kerry and from working as an artist from memory after departing Kerry at the age of seventeen. For Liam O’Neill painting is a matter of gritty loyalty. He is burdened and blessed by his obsession with West Kerry. It has provided him with subject matter whilst he pursued his artistic career in Dublin. It is a microcosm through which he has captured and chronicled images of our time. These subjects cover a variety of human types and experiences such as fishermen, men saving the hay, men bringing home the turf, old men engrossed in gossip and story telling, the momentum of Dingle Horse Races, psychological portraits of Irelands most dear and treasured writers such as Samuel Beckett and John B Keane, and not forgetting that time honored West Kerry tradition – drinking.
Liam’s recollection of West Kerry borders on the magical. He captures a timeless quality in his work, his subjects invigorated with paint strokes and passion. The people in his paintings conjure up a celebration of our nation, of our traditions, and of our culture. His canvases have been described as restoring a West Kerry that is fast fading beneath encrusted layers of time. The activities which he records are atavistic, harking back to a time which predates our forefathers, right back to a time when farming first began.
In his early career his used the brush and worked for photographic exactitude, but he discovered that by technique and temperament the palette knife suited him better. In his stylistic evolution as a painter through his expansion into landscape and genre scenes gave way to the use of bolder strokes and lighter colours. His work is appreciated for this use of colour, the lyrical lemon yellows, the ultra marines which swath across the canvas and the crimson burning red, dotted convincingly across a scene leading the viewers eye into the artists plane. His experiments with colour and his application of the paint guarantee him an important place in Irish modernism yet also it has drawn comparisons with the work of European Expressionists like Ensor or Roualt, the work of Oskar Kokoschka, or Jack B Yeats. Like them he does have a profound respect for the very act of painting and for the sheer expressive qualities of colour.
The effects which he produces in his paintings have been created from a vigorous technique, thick impasto applied from the tube, and mixed directly onto the canvas, using either the palette knife or his fingers. At times depending on location the colours may soften, especially in his Dublin scenes, but Kerry is depicted with bright skill, and deftness of character, a celebration of the colours which surround him. His methodology is inspiring and his strokes of paint are applied in a positive frenzy of excitement. He could spends days jousting with this enormous canvas, sweeping and jabbing on the oil paint in such a welter that the easel back peddles around the floor, tottering away from each flurry of the palette knife. Yet ultimately O’Neill retains control and it is this control which imbues strength of character and power in his paintings.
Liam O’Neill has returned now to his roots of native Kerry, with a new vision. His work now demonstrates a freedom reaching a new apotheosis of style. Assured of his medium he has become for many a true mentor in the arts of the Kingdom. Illuminating with clarity and imagination the lives of those who surround him, celebrating in his entire colour an Irishness that will never be lost or forgotten as long as Liam O’Neill continues to paint.
