Landscape Into Memory 5

Artist: O'Brien, John David b. 1956

Date: 2022

Medium: Acrylic paint and medium over modified printed pages on Baltic Birch plywood

Artwork Dimensions: 23 x 27 in.

County Department: Arts and Culture

Artwork Site: Civic Art Storage

Supervisorial District: 1

Current Status: In storage

About the Artwork: The artwork in the Landscape Into Memory series relates to other work which was done in the early 2000's and exemplifies my relationship to these landscapes and in particular to their transformation over time even including things such as erosion that takes away an existing landscape and creates another that we now view as rather beautiful Western landscapes. I treat these transformations and in the earlier series erosion as a metaphor both in the sense that is a negative and destructive force in landscape and also as a positive in that we adapt to the changed environment. That is both an environmental and personal of understanding of the metaphor. At the time I was doing the series, it was my own coming to terms with the fact that I had decided irrevocably to divorce and not to marry again, so I was coming to terms with that personal dissolution and new beginning. At the same time, I was looking at places like the Grand Canyon which we consider to be one of the marvels of the west and reflecting on how it was created by deforestation and rampant water and wind. I would like these images to convey the paradoxical difficulty of resolving these contradictions both in personal terms and ecological terms. It is almost as though there is a kernel of fatalism that has me circling back on the fact that things should be done as well as possible and ecologies need to be maintained but at the same time after all of the forces have converged and made unforeseen changes, as individuals and a species we seem able to adapt and incorporate those changes into something we work with.

About the Artist: Born into a military family in Sagamihara, Japan, John David O'Brien was raised in many cities in the USA and later a significant portion of his life in Italy. With an MFA in studio art from the University of Southern California, an AA.BB. degree from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, Rome, a Magistero degree from the Istituto Statale D'Arte di Urbino, Urbino, Italy and was qualified as a Master Printer by the Calcografia Nazionale (National Etching Institute) in Rome, Italy. He creates new and site-specific artwork for gallery/project exhibitions which he has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Los Angeles, Rome and New York among other locations, in venues ranging from commercial galleries to artist-run spaces, and non-profit institutions. He has received numerous public art commissions and was the recipient of a California Community Foundation Artist Fellowship, a City of Los Angeles Artist Grant and a Fulbright Research Grant. He has also been art event organizing and curating since 1989. This work has ranged from curating exhibitions at a local and international level, to being on the exhibition committee for area non-profit organizations, to directing long term project spaces that create venues for new and experimental art forms. His reviews, essays and profiles have been published regularly in magazines and art journals including Artillery Magazine, Sculpture Magazine, Tema Celeste, Art in America, ArtScene, World Art, Visions, Daily American/International Herald Tribune and La Repubblica, Rome, Italy. Critical texts have been published in the books Landscapes for Art (isc Press) and Testi Tessili (F.lli Palombi, Ed.) among others.