Artist Helen O’Leary is based between New York and Leitrim where she builds ‘history paintings’ as she describes in this exclusive interview
Originally from Wexford, the renowned artist Helen O’Leary is based between New York and Leitrim where she builds ‘history paintings’ created via a process of dismantling and redress as she describes in this exclusive interview …olour from plants, and have built a DIY museum/studio of accumulated waste from Craigslist . I break things down – language, institutions, rules, supports – and re-configure them into a re-imagined language I can handle.
In Jersey City, we rebuilt the house and my studio from trash, from unwanted things advertised on Craigslist, cheap, or on their way to landfill. My studio is epic, with big iron doors scrounged from a Mac Mansion, steel beams from a dismantled factory, fans and lights from other people’s lives, and reused windows from architectural salvage. I call it the DIY museum, both the three-storey house and studio are as pieced together as my work.
The farm where I grew up was littered with functional objects with great familial meaning. I think of them a lot, things that once had a function, but the meaning has been skewed, changed or lost. Language is much like that, it is constantly being re-jigged. The space in between feels very comfortable.Oddly enough, Charlie Haughey, which I know sounds insane. I never met the man and had nothing really to do with him at all. But he did change my life.
I took the bus into town, walked up to Kildare Street and asked the man at the booth if I could talk to the painters. Campbell Bruce and Charlie Brady kindly accommodated my impromptu visit, and I remember clearly sitting at a big table with my cheeks bruised and swollen from the teeth extraction, being asked why I wanted to be a painter.
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