Allan O'Marra
Allan O’Marra is a graduate of OCAD University where he studied photography, painting and communications and design. He is an award-winning artist, art teacher, fine arts columnist and art exhibition jurist.
He has had 50 solo fine art exhibitions and participated in over 140 group shows in a 51-year career, and has works of art in numerous private and corporate collections.
He presently paints full-time, conducts professional artist workshops and is asked regularly to jury fine art and photography shows.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
My paintings and drawings are primarily done in a high realist style using, principally, my own photography as reference. I also shoot photographs and exhibit them on their own fine art merits. Over the four decades of my career, I have put together solo shows on specific themes, i.e.: several suites of paintings of Lake Ontario; an exhibition of Polaroid photos titled, Parallels//Polarities; a show called The Joy of Falling, a set of psychologically-challenging paintings and drawings of leaping and falling child figures; a show of oil paintings based on images from a specific Family Reunion; Moments of Awakening, an exhibition with canvases that explored my spiritual quest as a Buddhist; and a painting series titled My Landscapes, a return to my muse, the countryside around rural Bancroft, Ontario, where I grew up, and images from the environs of Durham Region where I lived for numerous years. In the spring of 2013, I completed a series of 30 acrylic and mixed media on paper abstract paintings inspired by classical music compositions called Classical Abstracts. And then a series of “fusion” paintings in which I combined realistic figures in oils with acrylic and mixed media abstract elements. I produced a series of large format portraits of young females with serious expressions in the time frame 2014-16 I called Lush Gravitas that was exhibited at several venues, including at the Whitby Station Gallery. I exhibited a series of paintings called Magical-Mystical-Mythical at the Art Gallery of Bancroft in March 2017 that celebrated the attributes of magic and mystery and myth that I find in the Maxwell Settlement where I grew up and other locales I personally inhabit and through which I travel. In the summer of 2019, I held a show of florals and landscapes from the Maxwell Settlement locale, titled Endless Summer--in Whitby and at the studio retreat in Bancroft. In summer of 2020 I showed Recent Figurative Works at the Art Gallery of Bancroft (my hometown) that ran from mid-June through to the end of August. While during summer of 2021 I showed Still Life and Landscape Paintings at my Bancroft studio/retreat. And throughout the pandemic, I curated, organized and participated in five different online virtual art shows.
Allan O’Marra is a graduate of OCAD University where he studied photography, painting and communications and design. He is an award-winning artist, art teacher, fine arts columnist and art exhibition jurist.
He has had 50 solo fine art exhibitions and participated in over 140 group shows in a 51-year career, and has works of art in numerous private and corporate collections.
He presently paints full-time, conducts professional artist workshops and is asked regularly to jury fine art and photography shows.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
My paintings and drawings are primarily done in a high realist style using, principally, my own photography as reference. I also shoot photographs and exhibit them on their own fine art merits. Over the four decades of my career, I have put together solo shows on specific themes, i.e.: several suites of paintings of Lake Ontario; an exhibition of Polaroid photos titled, Parallels//Polarities; a show called The Joy of Falling, a set of psychologically-challenging paintings and drawings of leaping and falling child figures; a show of oil paintings based on images from a specific Family Reunion; Moments of Awakening, an exhibition with canvases that explored my spiritual quest as a Buddhist; and a painting series titled My Landscapes, a return to my muse, the countryside around rural Bancroft, Ontario, where I grew up, and images from the environs of Durham Region where I lived for numerous years. In the spring of 2013, I completed a series of 30 acrylic and mixed media on paper abstract paintings inspired by classical music compositions called Classical Abstracts. And then a series of “fusion” paintings in which I combined realistic figures in oils with acrylic and mixed media abstract elements. I produced a series of large format portraits of young females with serious expressions in the time frame 2014-16 I called Lush Gravitas that was exhibited at several venues, including at the Whitby Station Gallery. I exhibited a series of paintings called Magical-Mystical-Mythical at the Art Gallery of Bancroft in March 2017 that celebrated the attributes of magic and mystery and myth that I find in the Maxwell Settlement where I grew up and other locales I personally inhabit and through which I travel. In the summer of 2019, I held a show of florals and landscapes from the Maxwell Settlement locale, titled Endless Summer--in Whitby and at the studio retreat in Bancroft. In summer of 2020 I showed Recent Figurative Works at the Art Gallery of Bancroft (my hometown) that ran from mid-June through to the end of August. While during summer of 2021 I showed Still Life and Landscape Paintings at my Bancroft studio/retreat. And throughout the pandemic, I curated, organized and participated in five different online virtual art shows.
$1,350.00 CAD
Oil on canvas (framed).
25x25x2"
I found the reference image for this figurative piece on an online forum and requested the photographer's permission to turn it into a painting. What struck me about the image was how much it looked like a pairing of mother and child that the painter Donatello would compose for his works--but in a much more contemporary setting.
$2,100.00 CAD
Oil on canvas.
28x28x2"
A perennial flower started decades ago by my late mother that appears each year in my rural flower garden in the Bancroft area.
$2,100.00 CAD
Oil on canvas.
27x27"
A nasturtium in my backyard garden in Ajax.
$2,100.00 CAD
Oil on canvas.
27x27"
An amazing perennial bloom I found in backyard of the house I moved into.
$2,100.00 CAD
Oil on canvas.
27x27"
I've been growing nasturtiums since I was a child. Here's an orange one in my homestead garden near Bancroft.
$2,100.00 CAD
Oil on canvas.
27x27"
The same kind of mushrooms appear every year under the cedar trees growing at the front of my country retreat property.
$1,600.00 CAD
Oil on canvas.
28x25"
This is a long view of my rural home/studio in the Bancroft area with a wonderful rainbow highlighting and blessing it in glorious afternoon light.
$1,400.00 CAD
Oil on canvas (framed).
29x26"
The reference for this was a found image from the internet of a view in Pennsylvania. I asked and received the photographer's permission to turn it into a painting.
$2,000.00 CAD
Oil on canvas (framed).
36x24x2"
This is the view of a sunset looking towards the north-east at my rural retreat/studio in rural Ontario--treated in a much more graphic way than my usual straight-ahead realism
$2,100.00 CAD
Oil on canvas (framed).
33x24x2"
I'm a big fan of the American illustrator, Maxfield Parrish and decided to celebrate him with a painting of a mom with two little kids in dramatic light on a shoreline.
$3,000.00 CAD
Oil on canvas (framed).
40x28"
Image I conceived of with sweet swan flying over evening water scene.
$4,000.00 CAD
Oil on canvas (framed).
48x32"
I asked the I Ching for advice and it was "Old fox on thin ice". Got my answer and the theme for a painting.