Self-Portrait with Flowers 1973

Edward O’Brien made this self-portrait with flowers using colored pencil and graphite on paper. Just imagine O'Brien hunched over this piece, the shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition, slowly building up the image with delicate marks. The paper seems to breathe beneath the network of lines, as the flowers come into being from the ground up. The blues and greens feel particularly evocative. I can imagine O'Brien's hand moving across the page, coaxing the stems and petals into existence. There's a sense of intimacy, a feeling that we're witnessing a quiet moment of observation and reflection. In the broader context of O'Brien's practice, and within a wider history of artists' engagement with nature, this piece speaks to how the act of painting itself becomes a way of seeing, thinking, and experiencing the world. Artists are always in dialogue, aren’t they? This piece feels like a quiet yet powerful contribution to that conversation.