Mary Lovelace O'Neal (born February 10, 1942) is an American artist and arts educator. Her work is focused on abstracted mixed-media (primarily painting and printmaking) and minimalism. She is a
Professor Emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
,
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
and retired from teaching in 2006. O'Neal's art has been exhibited widely throughout North America and internationally, with group and solo shows in Italy, France, Chile,
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, NaìjÃrÃyà , yo, Nà ìjÃrÃà , pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
. She lives and works in Oakland, California, and maintains a studio in Chile.
Early life and education
Mary Lovelace was born in
Jackson, Mississippi
Jackson, officially the City of Jackson, is the capital of and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The city is also one of two county seats of Hinds County, along with Raymond. The city had a population of 153,701 at t ...
, on February 10, 1942. She credits her father for nurturing her love of the arts. During her childhood and adolescence O'Neal's father, Ariel Lovelace, was choir director and professor of music at
Tougaloo College
Tougaloo College is a private historically black college in the Tougaloo area of Jackson, Mississippi. It is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). It was originally established in 1869 by New Yor ...
and the
University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas (U of A, UArk, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and the largest university in the state. Founded as Arkansas ...
.
O'Neal attended
Howard University
Howard University (Howard) is a Private university, private, University charter#Federal, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classifie ...
in Washington, DC, from 1960 to 1964 and studied with
David Driskell
David C. Driskell (June 7, 1931 – April 1, 2020) was an American artist, scholar and curator; recognized for his work in establishing African-American Art as a distinct field of study. In his lifetime, Driskell was cited as one of the world†...
,
Lois Mailou Jones
Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1998) was an artist and educator. Her work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum o ...
and James A. Porter, receiving her B.F.A. in 1964. She attended the
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an artists residency located in Madison, Maine, just outside of Skowhegan. Every year, the program accepts online applications from emerging artists from November through January, and selects 65 ...
in Maine during the summer of 1963. During her time at Howard University, O'Neal became active in the
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
and mentored by many influential leaders in the movement, including
Stokely Carmichael
Kwame Ture (; born Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael; June 29, 1941November 15, 1998) was a prominent organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the Unite ...
,
Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Armstead Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", although by his own ...
and his wife, painter Gwendolyn Lawrence. She worked briefly at the Free Southern Theater (FST) with one of the theatre founders, her first husband John O'Neal.
O'Neal continued her fine arts education at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, studying with Aja Junger, Stephen Greene, Leon Golden and Andra Rat. While at Columbia, O'Neal became involved in the Black Art Movement in New York City, which further influenced her work. She received her M.F.A. from Columbia University in 1969.
Career
Mary Lovelace O'Neal's paintings have progressed through different phases over her long career, beginning with loose forms and evolving to more precise patterns. O'Neal has received numerous awards and exhibited in many national and international exhibitions throughout her career. She was invited as resident artist to participate in the international arts festival in
Morocco
Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria t ...
, in 1983. O'Neal curated an exhibition for the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago, Chile, "17 Artistas Latino y Afro Americanos en USA" in 1991. Two years later, she received the Artist En France Award sponsored by the French government and Moet & Chandon. In 2005, she was selected to represent Mississippi in the Committees Exhibition at the
National Museum of Women in the Arts
The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since openin ...
in Washington, D.C.
O'Neal started teaching full-time at
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
in 1978. In 1985 she became the first African American artist to receive tenure in the department of art, and then appointed in 1999 as the Chair of the Department of Art Practice until her retirement in 2006. She has taught at several institutions in the U.S. including the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...
Oakland, California
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
monotype
Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...
Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop The EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop is a 4000 square foot printmaking facility in Manhattan. She enjoyed the process so much and she explored various other printing processes and printed over 200 prints at Blackburn's shop over the years.
O’Neal's involvement with civil rights movements, and how they are represented in her art, can not be fully understood without mentioning the influence of Stokley Carmichael (O’Neal's former boyfriend) who coined the terms " Black Power" and " Black Panther" meaning "Power to the People". O’Neal traces her activism to Stokley, and in an interview with Bomb Magazine, O’Neal recalls how a chance encounter living in Morocco with other printmakers and creatives inspired her famous 1984 series ''Panthers in my Father''’''s Palace'', a likely homage to her experience being a Mississippi native. Akin to O’Neal's experience with abstract layering, she began collecting torn sheets of paper from printmaking studios in the early 1990s, breathing new life into another man's trash- reconstructing waste into experimental collage paintings. Along with Toro, who introduced new mediums and experimented with O’Neal, they displayed their original works ''Troisieme Triennale Mondiale d’Estampes'' at the Musee d’Art Contemporaine de Chemalieres, France from 1994 to 1997.
''Lampblack'' series, 1960s–1970s
O'Neal developed these paintings while earning her MFA at Columbia University. This series of monochromes, made in the late 1960s-early 70s, were monumental and made using ebony pigment that was rubbed into raw unstretched canvas using a chalkboard eraser or her hands. The deep black of the surface could, "absorb and silence the noise of ideology, activate space, and impact the body."
Exhibitions
In February 2020, Mnuchin Gallery held O'Neal's first solo exhibition in New York since 1993, which surveyed over five decades of her work, from the late 1960s through 2000s. The mini retrospective, ''Chasing Down the Image,'' reveals the ways in which O'Neal has engaged abstraction and materiality exuberantly for political ends, marrying experimental black aesthetics with influences of Minimalism. She was engaged with issues taken up by
Donald Judd
Donald Clarence Judd (June 3, 1928February 12, 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism (a term he nonetheless stridently disavowed).Tate Modern websit"Tate Modern Past Exhibitions Donald Judd" Retrieved on February 19, 2009. In ...
,
Joseph Stella
Joseph Stella (born Giuseppe Michele Stella, June 13, 1877 – November 5, 1946) was an Italian-born American Futurist painter best known for his depictions of industrial America, especially his images of the Brooklyn Bridge. He is also ...
, and
Sam Gilliam
Sam Gilliam ( ; November 30, 1933 – June 25, 2022) was an American color field painter and lyrical abstractionist artist. Gilliam was associated with the Washington Color School, a group of Washington, D.C.-area artists that developed a form ...
while simultaneously having conversations with Amiri Baraka who pushed her to make images of the Black Power movement instead of abstraction. During the 60s and 70s O'Neal's abstraction went against the emphasis placed on figuration by the Black Arts Movement and the Black Panthers as a means for Black empowerment. O'Neal's work, "insists on the aesthetic integration of experiences and styles once construed to be mutually exclusive."
In March 2020, the Museum of the African Diaspora mounted a solo exhibition of O'Neal's ''Whales Fucking'' series from the 1970s. These expressionist abstract landscapes were made in response to her first visit to the Bay Area that decade. They are made using oil paint, glitter and tape.
Public collections
Her work is in various permanent art collections including the
Oakland Museum of California
The Oakland Museum of California or OMCA (formerly the Oakland Museum) is an interdisciplinary museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California, located adjacent to Oak Street, 10th Street, and 11th Street in Oakland, Cal ...
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 1994 in Kansas City, Missouri. With a $5 million annual budget and approximately 75,000 visitors each year, it is Missouri's first and largest contemporary museum.
Founders
The core of the museum's perm ...
,
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and wa ...
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
s, the
Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of ...
Stokely Carmichael
Kwame Ture (; born Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael; June 29, 1941November 15, 1998) was a prominent organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the Unite ...
, whom she met while attending Howard University in the 1960s. Her first husband was John O'Neal. In 1983, O'Neal met the Chilean painter Patricio Moreno Toro, eventually she remarried.