O’Reilly Publishes Collection of Poems and Paintings

Bart O’Reilly, an Art & Design adjunct instructor at Harford Community College, has published a book titled My Father's Work Shed: Painting and Poems. O’Reilly teaches Fundamentals of 2D Design, Studio Drawing I: Observation, and Color: Art, Science, and Culture at Harford.

“This is a collection of poems and paintings written and painted over the course of the past eleven years. The book deals with loss, and the poems and paintings contribute a diffuse sense of the memories, places, and nostalgias that accompany it. The connection to Ireland and my childhood there is heightened by geographic distance and the recent passing of my parents.

Though the subject matter is deeply personal, I engage with contemporary art practice. I am concerned with aspects of language and the visual; how they can coexist yet never fully resolve. The paintings explore the legacy of modernist abstraction as much as they deal with personal content. Though I begin with childhood memories I develop a concurrent relationship with light, perception, material, and color; the ever -shifting background of Irish skies informing my complex relationship with twenty-first-century America.”

O’Reilly is an Irish artist living in Maryland. He teaches at Loyola University, Harford Community College, and Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). He earned a BFA from National College of Art and Design in Dublin and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. O’Reilly received an Individual Artists Award from The Baltimore Office of Promotions of the Arts. In addition, he received recognition for scholarly and creative work from Harford Community College as well as the MICA MFAST award.

My Father's Work Shed: Painting and Poems is available for purchase at www.bartoreilly.net.