Allan O’Marra – Recent Figurative Works: paintings

June 18 – August 29, 2020

There will be no Opening Reception due to COVID-19 restrictions

Co-Sponsors: Jean & Glenda Ménard, and Hugh & Ingrid Monteith

Artist Statement

Although I create art in a wide variety of subject matter, from landscape to still life to nature and including the abstract, at the time of my application for this show at Art Gallery of Bancroft,  I was, primarily, working on figurative pieces—in the landscape, in water activities and in interiors. And so I proposed to provide the series in the subject as titled.

The twenty works that comprise the show range in size from large oil on canvas paintings with numerous figures in groups; smaller canvases in combinations of smaller groups; single figure paintings; and oil portraits. And I am including graphite pencil drawings of several groups plus a solitary figure and a portrait, as well.

“Canoeing with Isabelle", oil on canvas, 24” x 36”

About the Artist

I was born in 1947 in the eastern Ontario village of Domville and my primary and secondary education was completed in the Bancroft, Ontario region. In 1967 I began studies at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto and graduated in 1971 from the Communications and Design course, with principal interest in painting and photography.

Over the following decades, I worked at various advertising and promotion jobs, in the Toronto area, in full and part-time positions–my last tenure being twenty years as promotions/print production manager in the Corporate Marketing Department of Bank of Montreal.

Throughout the years, I maintained a parallel career as a fine artist, showing in many dozens of solo and group exhibitions. As well, I have self-published two books of poetry combined with black and white photography, an illustrated children's book on the theme of meditation and, most recently (2012), a book in which I document the experience of a five-day meditation retreat in prose, poetry, photography and paintings and drawings titled, Retreat at Worst Horse.

Between 2001 and 2004 I trained at the Transpersonal Therapy Centre in Toronto. And since May of 2007, I have been working full-time as a fine artist and psychotherapist from my home in Ajax, Ontario. Between 2008 and 2015 I wrote a monthly column for a local news organization, Metroland Media, in which I profiled local artists, that were published online and in local papers; and continue that art journalism in the ArtScene newsletter of the Pineridge Arts Council to the present. And between 2008 and 2014 I facilitated art projects in the Durham Region artist-in-the-school ArtsSmarts program in local public and high schools. I presently teach art to two levels of children, plus two adult classes and two seniors’ classes in the City of Pickering community recreation program. As well, I act as a juror for various arts groups on an ongoing basis and curate, organize and participate in group art exhibitions with titles: Face Yourself, (2015, self-portraits), Art Heals (2016, facing trauma through creating a work of art) and The Mahler Collaborations (2017, my collaboration with 12 other artists, each pair producing a collaborative abstract). And am presently putting together an exhibition titled, 15 Reasons to Live (I’ve created 15 abstracts on the “Reasons” and have involved other artists to create a work of art in any genre on one of the themes). And I facilitate paint nights and co-ordinate the painting of murals on a voluntary basis with patients at the Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences in Whitby.

Exhibition Pictures

Long-time volunteer, fund-raiser extraordinaire and Past President Diana Gurley poses with her favourite picture in Allan's Exhibition

Nathan Lang and Grandfather Ken were the first visitors to view Allan' exhibition