About the artist

Joe O' Connor, a geologist and mineral chemist by training and profession for approximately a googol years, began sketching and pen and ink drawings at about the same time he started being a geologist the 1960s. The marvelous play of light and shadow in the desert southwest and the decaying evidence of the struggle for existence in the mining camps and cattle ranches of that area were too strong not to try to record. He moved to water colors in the late 1980s, inspired by the water colorist Linda Roberts, from whom he has taken several master classes, and incorporates his deep feeling for the native ancestors of the land into many of his Canyonlands paintings. Painting mostly in the realistic camp of the art world, Joe, like many artists bridles at the "just like a photograph" compliment paid to many of his works. Art, whether painting or photography or other constructions of the mind and hand, should reflect the spirit of the artist in a depiction of his view, he fusses. Otherwise we would all use a point-and-shoot Brownie, the ultimate hostage-taker of the moment. Watch for more abstraction in future Canyonlands landscapes, Joe promises, and in a series of European river valley studies he has begun. More realistic paintings in progress include a series of portrayals of life and times along the Moffat Grade, where the railroad went over the continental divide at Corona Pass early in the twentieth century.

To purchase art or get more information about works by Joe O' Connor and other Shadow Mountain Gallery artists, please come see us at 28186 Hwy 74 (Main Street) in Evergreen, Colorado or contact us by phone 303.670.3488
or by e-mail: Shadowmountaingallery@Hotmail.com