ALEX O’NEAL

My 2009 oil pastel, “New Looks And Accessories For The Delta Scene,” gives an overview of what occurred in studio over the last two years. Though still rooted in my past premise- a narrative involving anarchist Mean Hippies, anchored to Mississippi’s Delta, their eccentric relationship with animals and the natural world, and an awkward fashion statement arising from useless disguises- I have decided the work speaks more personally and specifically, referring more to the dysfunctional family unit. In a way, I am Pop Art-izing a small dysfunctional community that, like my Mean Hippies, has its resident anarchists and terrorists, veiled in disguises, and ready to drop their trademark bombs at family gatherings. That being said, I have been bringing new forms to the work as well, including more totemic form inspired by medieval architecture and Pacific Northwest Coast indigenous art and unusually inventive European Art Brut. The candy-striped element of past work is furthered by neck ties, tongues, King Tut masks, and platform boots. Old-fashioned telephone receivers, clinging to people’s faces like crescent moons, suggest the communicative potential of artworks. Hair imagery remains important; a new wig-combing or hair-tugging character is a poor man’s Delilah.

This summer exhibition will reveal so much of what I was thinking during the last two years. The amount of works will illustrate how an artist’s works benefit from the ones he or she makes before the next ones. That is, I feel a viewer will see more how an idea or image began in one work- or was simply hinted at- and came into fruition within a year or two. Some recent paintings and drawings seem like letters I’ve composed of personal symbols. They have visual narratives, i. e. “Events Surrounding The Death Of Miss Nude Flea Market”, that keep giving a viewer clues that even I have yet to fully understand.

Four works, made in Cassis, France, this last winter and spring at the Camargo Foundation, have new imagery and incorporate some new phrases. During those months in France, side trips to Heidelberg, Lausanne, Bern, and Barcelona had some immediate influences which is unusual considering how I usually digest information. Large, decorated hearts, a kind of sweet talk beyond my characters’ peppermint tongues, were real objects, big iced cookies that weighed down Heidelberg candy wagons like ex-votos. Colorful stickers, advertising Spanish locksmiths, I peeled from Barcelona shop gates and collaged onto “Flea Market Superstars (Painting with 25 Suns)” with an unintential pun about unlocking hearts. Of the most noteworthy in my new work are flamboyant, glam-rock characters proclaiming, “The Art World is not your friend!” or  “The Art World is not my friend!”. For my paintings’ and drawings’ Mean Hippies and other characters to be saying such makes them the anarchists I envision them to be.