aBOUT THE ARTIST

Margaret O'Brien-Nelson

My current series, BODIES OF WATER, explores single figures, in or near water. Water is a connective membrane which the figure moves in and around.   In my swimming paintings, viewers are confronted with ambiguity.

Sorting through the events that led us to where we are today can sometimes be overwhelming. Moments of unquiet stillness, however, have helped me find ways around the damage and heartache that come with being.

Water, like solitude, can provide comfort despite the fear brought with disconnection. How we enter and exit can be ritual or spontaneous. Water is like life.

My paintings of the Galveston Bay area reflect my fifty-five-year love affair with its waters.  Like any relationship, it takes patience and perseverance to survive. The images that resonate with me are impermanent. They change with time, mowed over by storms, and construction - and are presented in a new way.

Painting of a deserted roadside with a left turn sign and a speed limit sign of 15 mph, a guardrail, and a person walking in the distance on a sunny day.
A painting of a country road passing farmland with power lines and a distant industrial building against a blue sky.
Painting of a view through a wooden structure showing a deck with chairs and a distant water body, with a bird flying in the sky.
An oil painting of a pier over the water, with a road below and a yellow road sign on the left.
A painted landscape featuring a grassy field with a large palm tree in the distance. There is a concrete path with a white picnic table on it in the foreground. The sky is partly cloudy with blue and gray tones.
A person walking along a dirt path beside grassy fields and bushes on a cloudy day, wearing a hat, a light-colored jacket, dark pants, and holding a blue bag.
A painting of a house on stilts by the water with sky and waves in the background, using abstract and soft pastel colors.
A boy with glasses walking barefoot on a wooden pier, with a hammock hanging from a wooden structure over calm blue water and a cloudy sky in the background.
Oil painting of a countryside landscape with a large, leafy tree in the foreground, expansive grassy fields, and a cloudy sky.
A city street scene with a building that has a red roof and white walls, traffic lights, street signs, and trees in the background, under a cloudy sky.

In my departure from painting bridges, streets and shell roads of the Galveston Bay area I knew I was going off the deep end.

The dive was more than worth it. I needed to do it for myself to grow as an artist. To be able to give expression to something I have known for so long.

The waters split open, you enter, and the world changes. Your eyes register a place altered by a fixed instability - streams of visual information that parallel and cross your senses. Color, light, and weight are changed. You float, swim, flutter and dive in what feels like another universe. Disconnected with your terrestrial self.

A black-and-white photograph of a man in a sailor's uniform holding a young girl, with a boat and water in the background.

I was born in Trieste on the northeastern most coast of Italy. My sister and I were put in buggies and carted over cobbled streets and docks from which we sailed to America for the first time. Family photos show the sadness of departure and apprehension. That was the first one. Each trip left me imprinted with the power and solemnity of water. The water opened my eyes to a basic but profound universal view at a very young age.