Helen O'Leary

O'Leary was born in County Wexford in southeastern Ireland in 1961. She grew up with her sisters on a small farm owned by her parents, Richard and Kathleen, that she has called "pre-modern." A tornado, a lightning strike, and her father's early death when O'Leary was eleven left the family at risk of losing the farm; the ensuing struggle, which her mother met by renting rooms to tourists as a B&B, marks O'Leary's practice and forms the basis of its feminist language. She also cites her father's practical inventiveness, the demands of farm life, and meeting far-flung visitors in the guest house as key influences. In 1991, she accepted a teaching position at the School of Visual Arts at Penn State University; she was made Professor in 2006, and continues to teach there. In 2013, O'Leary collaborated with her daughter, photographer Eva O'Leary, and poet Vona Groarke for an exhibition at the Irish Art Center in New York. ==Work==

Writers such as Alison Pilkington and Robin Hill suggest that O'Leary's work deconstructs painting, expanding its possibilities into space while blurring boundaries between object and image with bricolage approaches they trace to Kurt Schwitters and Dada, as well as Arte Povera. that she regards as a complete whole, from its objects and scraps to incidental marks on the floors and tables. Early paintings In her early work in Chicago, O'Leary created large-scale paintings that riffed on the "heroic" work of abstract expressionism (e.g., Untitled, 1989). Constructed paintings In the 2000s, O'Leary began creating constructed paintings focused on themes of vulnerability, uncertainty, concealment and perseverance with a feminist inflection (e.g., Delicate Negotiations, 2015). In the installations The Shape of Disappointment (2007), Outawack (2009–12) and Shelf life of facts (2016), she reconfigured frames into excessive, prosthesis-like supports that conveyed uncertainty, shifting perspectives, and a sense of controlled violence in their making. The wall-mounted "Armour" series (2013–4) featured small, façades of abutted bits of panel that obscure, but also reveal (through peephole-like fissures), views of cobbled, sometimes thwarted armatures. Reviewers described them as delicate, tentative pieces reflecting mystery, assured resourcefulness, meticulousness and quiet strength, austerely painted in grey, purple brown, olive and white egg tempera. Identifying the work's foregrounding of structure, she situated it in a liminal space between becoming and unbecoming, assemblage and dis-assemblage. The two-person exhibition, "Shelter" (M. David & Co., 2022, with Liliana Zavaleta), explored various themes around the title concept related to belonging, memory, identity, and community. == Awards and recognition ==

O'Leary's art has been honored with the Rome Prize (American Academy in Rome, (2018–9), fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2021), Guggenheim Foundation (2010), and awards from Culture Ireland (2015) and the Joan Mitchell (1999) and residencies from Yaddo, It was also included in the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) Glasgow exhibit and book, An Leabhar Mór (The Great Book of Gaelic) (2002–3). ==References==