Alex O'Neal

About the Artist

Born and raised in Mississippi, Alex O'Neal graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the Eighties, his formal education overlapped regular visits with Mississippi self-taught artists, including Mary T. Smith, Luster Willis, and Son Ford Thomas. He later immersed himself in art brut collections in Switzerland, Germany, and France.

Artist Statement

My mixed media work presents personal shrines and memorials that refer to places, phrases, and objects that have inspired and idiosyncratically informed me. Wreaths, words made of flowers, shields, badges, sashes, votive clock faces, Pyrenean thistle flowers, and money offerings, among other things, are in cluttered arrangements and often behind veils and bars that protect and/or jail them. Hovering zigzag forms are simplified migraine auras that create a kind of anxious weather…. The appearance and quirky sentiment of my work are influenced by early American mourning art, a genre that developed in response to the death of George Washington. Mourning themes became more personalized in the watercolors and needleworks of mainly 19th Century school girls and became an important aspect of American folk art. My work is also inspired by African-American self-taught art and European art brut.