Marimekko Ducks,Oil Canvas, American Art, Realism, Tchotskes Quirky Objects2015

Marimekko Ducks is 20 x 20 inches oil on canvas. .Maureen likes to use Marimekko fabrics in many of her paintings. Randi Hopkins, former assistant curator at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, has called O’Connor “a masterful painter of some of our favorite things.” A pair of ceramic ducks salt and pepper shakers, given to her by the Parisian mother of an old roommate, remains one of O’Connor’s favorite subjects. Other favored subjects include cookies, flowers, candies and a gumball machine, along with Boston landscapes, buildings and houses on streets. She often combines her subjects with patterned fabric she finds interesting. O’Connor, who’s lived in Boston for the past 40 years, was born in upstate New York. Her family briefly moved to Massachusetts when O’Connor was 8 – the same time she began taking art classes at the Museum of Fine Arts. “As a little kid, I was sort of weird and carried around my drawing books in the fourth grade. I’d carry them under my arms, walk around and have my little [artwork] collection,” said O’Connor, who took a liking to oil painting during her late teenage years. O’Connor’s family moved to Burlington, Vermont for 10 years before O’Connor returned to Massachusetts at 18 for art school. O’Connor earned a bachelor’s of fine arts degree from Mass College of Art and a painting and printmaking diploma from the Boston Art Institute. “When I was in college I did printmaking, but I realized when I got out of college I didn’t have enough money for the big press. Finally, oil painting is pretty inexpensive to do,” said O’Connor, who’s painted both in studios and outdoors. She’s worked part-time at the Museum of Fine Arts since 1979 as a security specialist. O’Connor has shared her artwork with others for the last 38 years. Her work’s been shown throughout the U.S. and is in the collections of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Fidelity Investments, Boston Medical Center and Biogen, IDEC and more. It is also included in the collection of Bruce Dayton, owner of Target and great benefactor at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and Richard Miner, co founder of Android and partner at Google. Her artwork appeared in David Mamet’s film, “Lipservice,” an HBO production filmed in Boston. What about drawing and painting has kept you doing it all these years? I guess the discipline. I think people have their different ways of understanding the world and that’s my way of understanding – I like to draw and then at some point think about color. And then when I have a drawing I’m thinking, ‘Maybe it’d be better this way,’ so it just becomes a routine of discipline. And I’m just visually interested in things. Where if someone walks into a room and doesn’t notice anything, I’ll notice what’s on the wall. Even in movies, I’ll look at the artwork and what’s behind the actors – I’m just interested in the visual part of the world. And then I’m also responsive to it by drawing or painting. How would you describe your artistic approach? I’m a direct observation painter. These days a lot of people don’t do that. If I’m doing a still-life, which I’m doing a lot of these days, I set it up in front of me in a room with light coming in from the window, but I really do a lot of night painting. And then I paint directly; I’m trying to understand what’s in front of me. When I did landscapes in the wintertime, I’d have to stay inside. What colors do you favor and why? I guess you could say I have a lot more color in my paintings than others do. I love color and I love color theory and colors reflecting off other colors in the painting. I also love fabrics, really bold fabrics and there’s a lot of color often in bold fabrics. So you have to sort of balance the paintings with the quieter area and use the bold fabrics. Sometimes I combine two fabrics in a quieter painting. It’s just a constant dialogue going on. Why do you illustrate reflections and shadows in your paintings? I go by what’s there and what I’m using, and refining — that is not always an easy process, but I’m trying to see what’s in front of me. I’m not a photographic painter, you know, an ultra realistic painter, but I use those elements to keep the painting interesting. What are your plans moving forward with art? I’m just continuing to work. I’m working on a gumball machine painting right now. I’m just getting more artwork out there and developing more.