Bart O'Reilly

Bart O'Reilly is a contemporary Irish artist, currently living and working in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, where he is making a name for himself.

Bart was born in 1975 in Dublin, Ireland where he was brought up and educated until the year 2000. He took private art lessons from a local artist, Pauline Macy and this experience influenced and inspired him to pursue an artistic direction. He enrolled initially at the Dundrum College for Art and Design, Preparatory School in Dublin (1995) and later graduated from the National College of Art and Design (BFA, honors 2000).

Bart has had numerous exhibitions both in the USA and in Ireland. Among them at the Sligo Gallery, Sligo (2003), Orchard Gallery, Derry, N. Ireland (2002), Rubicon Gallery, Dublin (2001), RDS Award Exhibition, Dublin (2000), Civic Offices, Dublin (1999) and at Montage Gallery, Baltimore, USA (2004) and (2005). His artworks are in public and private collections.

In his past artwork, Bart's paintings were based on mass media, TV and video projector images of news and documentary programs. The moving images and colours were added into the paintings in a build-up and later on in a reduction process of imagery and colour. In 2004, Bart started exploring a new way to create artwork where he builds up a 'portfolio' of substitute imagery of small spontaneous paintings, representing pictures from personal memory of past events and places. Bart created new elements, such as overlapping imagery, "spotted" landscape, opaque stain of colour, and laced underlines.

Bart's new body of work, "Passing Places" (September 2005), signifies a turning point in his artwork. Bart made a transition from painting on paper onto canvas with acrylic texture. Each painting tells us about one place and perhaps many more, as it plays and tags along abstractly, with a touch of surrealism.