O’Neill Cushman

O’Neill Cushman is an American born artist living and working in Provence. 

His paintings are executed directly from nature in one single session, and each of them often forms part of a larger series. In his paintings, O’Neill seeks to eliminate the obsolete distinction between sketch-painting and finished product.  The sketch, the exploration, and the final piece are one and the same.  His method results in fresh, spontaneous paintings, each one a new expression of his vision of the motif.  

He emphasizes the distinction between looking at the visible world and looking into it, where looking into the world involves simultaneously looking into himself.  He paints the experience of seeing, within the visible, an aspect that has never before been seen.  This phenomenological expressionism brings artist and viewer alike into a state of intimate connection to the motif, and gives new expression, in the form of the work, to a fundamental sense of O’Neill’s particular vision.

Selected Works

“Begining with a blank canvas, I look out at some part of the world in front of me.  I find something that feels significant, something in which one could sense one’s place in the universe.  I look very hard at it - into it, and at the same time into myself - and I paint what I see.”

All images property of the artist.

Previous
Previous

John Springer

Next
Next

Pauline Bétrancourt