Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Painter and Civil Rights Luminary, Dies at 84

"Lovelace O'Neal's monumental paintings, which move fluidly between abstraction and figuration, are characterized by large gestural marks and explosive energy. She was perhaps best known for her Lampblack paintings, in which she applied layers of loose black pigment to her canvases and used a chalkboard eraser or her hands to punctuate the surface with thin white or colored lines. They are insistent declarations of Blackness and presence in spaces where Black families and women have historically not always been welcome."

"In a statement to Hyperallergic, art historian and curator Katy Siegel called her work "milestone statements in the recent history of painting." "They aim still higher, touching the metaphysics of life and the natural world," Siegel added."

"Born in 1942 in Jackson, Mississippi, Lovelace O'Neal spent most of her childhood in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Her father was a music professor at Jackson State University, Arkansas State University, and Tougaloo College. In our recent interview in she recalled that Black families were only permitted to visit museums on specific days of the month in Jim Crow-era Jackson. As a child, Lovelace O'Neal would travel by train each summer to Chicago and Gary, Indiana, where her father's family had moved during the Great Migration."

""Daddy wasn't trying to make us into artists, but he gave us crayons, scissors, and glue to keep us from acting out on the train," she told me. "At first, we stayed in our t"

Mary Lovelace O'Neal, a painter, educator, and Civil Rights activist, died on May 10 at age 84 in Mérida, Mexico. She was known for monumental paintings that shift between abstraction and figuration, marked by large gestural strokes and explosive energy. Her best-known Lampblack paintings used layers of loose black pigment, then punctuated the surface with thin white or colored lines using a chalkboard eraser or her hands. The works function as declarations of Blackness and presence in spaces where Black families and women were historically unwelcome. Born in 1942 in Jackson, Mississippi, she grew up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and later spent time between Mérida and Oakland, California, with her husband, Patricio Moreno Toro.

Read at Hyperallergic