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.
$2,000.00
Oil on canvas (framed).
37x25x2"
This is a lovely winter scene nearby my country home in the Bancroft area--in a place called Lakeview. The cedar rail fences are almost all gone now but this one, happily still remains.
$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
$2,100.00
Oil on canvas (framed).
33x24"
I'm a collector of antique bottles and this is a still life of some of them in one of my windows.
$1,200.00
Oil on canvas.
25x21"
Another in an ongoing series of still lifes of a selection of my antique bottle collection in a window of my rural retreat
$1,350.00
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.
$1,650.00
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.
$1,650.00
Oil on canvas.
27x27"
A nasturtium in my backyard garden in Ajax.
$1,650.00
Oil on canvas.
27x27"
An amazing perennial bloom I found in backyard of the house I moved into.
$1,650.00
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
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
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.