ROBYN O'NEIL : An Unkindness

August - November 2023

ROBYN O'NEIL: AN UNKINDNESS
Reading left to right, Robyn O’Neil’s An Unkindness, a towering six-foot drawing in three parts, opens on a pack of hungry wolves. The horror and claustrophobia of the scene is amplified by the unkindness of shrieking ravens that follows close on, beating wings obliterating a rising sun. The third and final panel promises redemption, with a nod to Hokusai, in an ethereal, idyllic place. Characteristic of O’Neil’s meticulous drawing practice, thin and sharp edges define each figure in a provocative, awe-inspiring scene. A singular crow flies past the fictive frame, high above the chaos that reigns below, in search of rest and haven. As sunrise pierces the unkindness, a scene of terror giving way to a brighter future.
ROBYN O'NEIL, An Unkindness, 2019
In early religious paintings, triptychs served as a common device to tell the story of Heaven and Hell. Here, in three panels, the viewer travels through a Hell of Man's own making, absent of humans but not our impact, and on to a new world.

This illustration of the Anthropocene describes an era in which humanity has permanently altered the planet. Some scientists argue it began with the 19th century Industrial Revolution while others contend it was the use of the atomic bomb in 1945. Mass extinction defines and separates the Anthropocene from previous eras. While there have been several such periods over the ages due to natural disasters, at no other point has a single species had such an impact.
ROBYN O'NEIL, An Unkindness, 2019 (Right Panel Detail)

“I envisioned a world with no one. Empty, raw, new. I saw tectonic plates, a heated ocean, and misty beginnings. And, yes, after utter chaos. I wanted it to be both the aftermath of The End and images of a new world.”

- Robyn O'Neil
ROBYN O'NEIL, An Unkindness, 2019 (Left Panel Detail)

O’Neil begins her narrative in Hell. Snarling wolves amass in a suffocating composition of aggression propelled by fear and hunger. Wolves are highly social animals, relying heavily on each other for survival. This dependency makes them extremely territorial as they are forced to protect a diminishing territory. Across cultures, wolves are associated with greed, destruction, and death. The Norse myth that describes the end of the world features the wolf Fenrir who swallows the sun and the moon and eats the gods, while the Menominee tribe in Milwaukee believes a wolf is the guardian of the dead.
“In her reckoning, humans negatively affect their environment, but the land, the sky, and the roiling ocean always have the proverbial last word, destroying the hubris of human ambition.”

- Matthew Bourbon, Dallas Morning News
ROBYN O'NEIL, An Unkindness, 2019 (Center Panel Detail)

Where the left panel is populated by a pack or rout of wolves, the central panel is overtaken by an unkindness of ravens, also known as a treachery or a conspiracy. As scavengers, they are often associated with war and misfortune in mythology. The Irish warrior-goddess called The Morrigan is always shown with crows by her side as a symbol of the battlefield while Odin, the Norse god of war, carries ravens on each shoulder.

These carrion birds are highly intelligent and adaptable, responding to encroaching urbanization by learning to live in towns and cities. They are perceived as messengers and often considered harbingers of misfortune. Odin’s ravens, called Huginn and Muninn (Thought and Memory), reported back all they had seen as they flew across the world.
ROBYN O'NEIL, An Unkindess, 2019 (Center Panel Detail)

Similarly, the Alaskan Inuit tells the story of a messenger crow who brought daylight to the north. According to the tale, the north was always dark until the Inuit begged an old crow to bring back the daylight he had described from his travels. The old crow flew for many days and returned with a ball of daylight wrapped in string. He dropped it, shattering the ball into a thousand pieces, lighting each home and the entire sky. However, it was a small ball of daylight and could bring light only six months out of the year.

In the center panel, a single crow appears to break free from the picture plane entering the viewer’s space. Whether a harbinger of misfortune or the bringer of daylight, this crow escapes the bedlam and madness of his existence and plots a course to a new world.
ROBYN O'NEIL, An Unkindess, 2019 (Right Panel Detail)

An Unkindness is in conversation with Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, which features Paradise on the left, a world of deception and lust in the center, and the resulting Hell on the right. O’Neil flips the script, beginning the narrative in Hell and concluding in Paradise.

“My practice consists of horrifying scenes, but they always include an element of hope. I’ve drawn Hell for a long time. I’m getting past that now, in this piece, the most important panel is my scene of Heaven”

- Robyn O'Neil
Northern Renaissance artists, like Bosch, were noted for their vocabulary of realism and minute attention to detail. They transformed the metaphysical into a tangible reality, while their use of fictive frames and trompe l’oeil invited the viewer into the picture. These paintings were often used for meditation, prayer, and most certainly as a cautionary tale. In the same tradition, O’Neil has created a space for the audience to reflect on our effect on the planet. The scale and detail of An Unkindness encourages the viewer to linger and to reflect on the darkness of our past, the potential of our present, and hope for a better future.
Installation view, Robyn O'Neil: WE, THE MASSES, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas, 2019. Photo: Kevin Todora.
“My triptychs also tend to explore how much I actually love the world around me. As much as my work has a dark side, it also usually ends in hope. The entire right panel is that of a heavenly scene. A place we would want to be.”

- Robyn O'Neil
ROBYN O’NEIL (b. 1977) creates works on paper whose monumental narratives straddle the line between comedy and tragedy. Her extensive oeuvre excavates memories and art historical references to populate large-scale graphite landscapes. In late 2019, O’Neil was honored with a mid-career retrospective, WE, THE MASSES, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Her solo exhibitions include the Des Moines Center of Art; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston-Salem. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Dallas Museum of Art; Menil Collection, Houston; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, among others.

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ROBYN O'NEIL : An Unkindness

ROBYN O'NEIL: AN UNKINDNESS

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