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 52 solo fine art exhibitions and participated in over 150 group shows in a 52-year career, and has works of art in numerous private and corporate collections.
In 2022 he moved to the family homestead--a vintage one-room schoolhouse in the Bancroft, Ontario area that is now in his possession--where he paints full-time and teaches a weekly adult acrylic painting class..
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. In May of 2023, I showed 'Living My Muse' (landscapes and still life works) at the Art Gallery of Bancroft. 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 52 solo fine art exhibitions and participated in over 150 group shows in a 52-year career, and has works of art in numerous private and corporate collections.
In 2022 he moved to the family homestead--a vintage one-room schoolhouse in the Bancroft, Ontario area that is now in his possession--where he paints full-time and teaches a weekly adult acrylic painting class..
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. In May of 2023, I showed 'Living My Muse' (landscapes and still life works) at the Art Gallery of Bancroft. And throughout the pandemic, I curated, organized and participated in five different online virtual art shows.
$1,100.00
Oil on canvas.
21x25x2"
The fall colour in the rural Bancroft area is almost always pretty spectacular however, I decided to paint this close up of oak leaves in later, darker colours with the fall sunlight shining through from behind.
$1,300.00
Oil on canvas (framed).
25x25"
My favourite flower and floral scent is the wild rose. This is a painting from reference of a perennial rose bush growing by the side of the lake near where I live outside the town of Bancroft.
$2,000.00
Oil on canvas (framed).
41x23"
Tis is a fall view of the lake and hills in the north part of the valley where my rural art studio/retreat is located near Bancroft, Ontario
$2,000.00
Oil on canvas
37x25"
This is an oil painting featuring my home/studio, a vintage schoolhouse in the Bancroft area of Ontario in a winter setting with full moon rising.
$1,100.00
Oil on canvas.
21x21"
At a point this past spring when I was preparing to move, a friend brought me this fab going away bouquet of tulips. I took it to my new place and took some pix of it.. And turned this version of a unique from-directly-above vantage point into this painting.
$1,800.00
Oil on canvas (framed).
41x21x2"
This is a view I have seen innumerable times driving between the Bancroft area and the GTA / Durham Region over the years and captured a picture of this wonderful winter scene with subtle sky colour one late afternoon. And decided to turn it into one of my many landscape paintings.
$2,000.00
Oil on canvas.
37x25"
A bed of Pickerel Weed just off the dock on the lake in front of my property in the Bancroft area of rural Ontario with a sunset flooding the water scene.
$2,100.00
Oil on canvas (framed).
37x22x2"
A patch of sky over my rural studio with clouds going in one direction and trees blowing in the other, a helicopter passing by ...
$1,800.00
Oil on canvas (framed).
41x21x2"
I saw this unusually richly coloured winter sunset at the west end of my street where I was living in Ajax, Ontario and figured it for one of the numerous sunsets I have painted over the years.
$2,250.00
Oil on canvas (framed).
40x25"
This is a view from my rural property near Bancroft, Ontario towards a row of hills in bright fall colours with dark clouds looming overhead across the nearby field.
$900.00
Oil on canvas.
18x12.50"
I spied this combination on a plate on which I have fruit and vegetables ripen and figured the scene might make a nice picture and used what I captured as reference to make this still life.
$1,600.00
Oil on canvas (framed).
31x21x2"
Another in an ongoing series of still lifes of a selection of my antique bottle collection in a window of my rural retreat