Today we’d like to introduce you to Jane O’hara

Hi Jane, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?

As a kid I think drawing and painting kept me company. My four siblings left home when I was between 6 and 10 years old and it was just me and my parents rattling around in a big house. My dog was my best friend, which played into my later focus on animals (and their plight) in my artwork. I studied painting at Boston University and from there my journey as an artist took may turns. A significant detour was making a living as a mural and decorative painter. It did absorb too much energy to pursue my artwork in any meaningful way, but I learned some helpful things I was able to transfer onto my art career later.
Today I am an artist completely centered on narratives involving animals, using the paintings as a way to communicate what I see about the troubled human-animal bond. I’ve found curating exhibitions to be a vehicle to work with some wonderful artists who also use animals as subject matter – in a variety of ways and for differing reasons. Giving presentations featuring these different artists’ work or my own work featured to tell my story of opening myself towards compassion of animals has rounded out the desire to share my passion for the non-human animals we share the earth with.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

Smooth? not exactly! But the beauty of struggles for me is that when I’m living my life, in the midst of a state of flow or in the quagmire of obstructions, I’m too busy coping to think about it as a struggle. I guess what I mean is that I only in retrospect seem to see a bigger picture.

I am a strong believer that everything that I have gone through has made me who I am today, and I’m happy with that person so I never regret. I’ve had years of therapy tagged onto a long alcoholic journey, I’ve had unhealthy relationships, unhealthy bank accounts, and too many close calls to count. BUT, I’ve been given grace and opportunity time and time again and a spiritual belief -wavering at first but growing into strength- and I feel these things are completely interwoven.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?

Last year I completed a 51 painting series called State of the Union – Animals Across America. which showed at the New Bedford Art Museum in New Bedford, MA for the inaugural 2023 exhibition. Jane O’Hara – State of the Union , a Jane O’Hara Projects publication catalogues the paintings in the State of the Union series. In my work I’m known for creating narratives questioning our complex relations with non-human animals, and this work does this by taking us across the United States. Doing this body of work, the book and exhibition took close to 4 years. I gathered inspiration from disparate sources; from nostalgic postcard iconography, state animals, landscapes and figures, to pop reference. Adding humor and sentimentality, Nellie the cat represents the companion animal as she embarks on her own adventure through each painting. Surrealistic bubbles play a central role in each piece, holding images that depict animal right violations.

While this body of work is unique in some ways, and in its scope, it carries on themes and visual metaphors I’ve used in my work for years, and continue to use. I am always on the lookout for new ways to communicate these themes of the human-animal bond. My latest series is called A Humane Dilemma : When Animals Speak. This body of work has a surreal narrative, often adding humans absorbed in their daily activities unaware of the animals falling, flying or precariously balancing around them. The vulnerable creatures try to cope with an oblivious world.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?

Honestly, I try to spend as little energy as possible thinking about the business of art. Of course I do follow it but it’s a recipe for personal disaster when I follow too closely. There will always be shifts and trends in what museums and galleries are interested in showing. What the public is interested in. I studied figurative work at BU when abstract expressionism was the thing. Social issues with people are at the forefront now, but I feel that animal artwork like I do can be not taken seriously in the art world. I have my own opinions why that may be, but suffice it to say I think animal rights as a serious subject of art is only now being legitimized. So I would LIKE to say the big shift and trend is towards non-human animal focused artwork dealing with the inequities animals experience at our hand.

Pricing:

• My work is currently represented by The William Scott Gallery in Provincetown, MA, for pricing https://www.williamscottgallery.com
• for commissioned work https://janeoharaprojects.org/commissions
• All inquiries jo@janeoharaprojects.org

Contact Info:

• Website: https://janeoharaprojects.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janeoharaprojects/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555163965305

Image Credits
not applicable