Nancy O’Hara

“Pressing Matters”

March 26 - May 12, 2024

An O’Hara print gives the viewer a collection of simple abstract shapes to meditate on, asking us to consider their color, their blurred or hard borders, how they overlap, and how these shapes relate to one another.  She would not tell a viewer what to feel when they look at her work, but for her the intent is clear.  She hopes to communicate with people - to communicate her joy of life and the peace and tranquility that she feels.  This joy doesn’t necessarily come easy, the pressing matters in our world weigh on her, but through meditation and her artistic practice, she is able to find daily peace.     

O’Hara began her visual arts practice as an abstract painter.  Over time she wanted to explore other materials.  She also wanted to do something that would require her to move around. Monoprint making seemed more active.  At the Woodstock School of Art she saw young printmakers tearing paper, preparing large plates, working together to operate the presses - the work looked fun.  And it was.  She quickly fell in love with the process and developed her own collagraph vocabulary by cutting and ripping shapes out of cardboard or milk cartons and then adding sandpaper, string and brushstrokes to the plate.

The works on exhibition at WoH are O’Hara’s largest prints to date (42”x20”).  The mechanics of making the work, the unwieldiness of the large paper and working the press, was an exhilarating challenge which was balanced by the familiarity of the color, shapes, and forms on the plate, “...and the surprises were fun no matter what.”

About the Artist

Nancy O’Hara’s largest canvas and her finest artistic expression – her own life – continue to be a work in progress.  Moving to the Hudson Valley from New York City in 2015 added a thrilling new dimension to her artistic adventure: a playground filled with beauty and the opportunity to express with pencils, ink, pastels, crayons and paint on various surfaces what cannot be expressed with words.  Along with being an artist, Nancy is a meditation teacher, a life-coach, and the author of six non-fiction books and two mystery novels. 

Nancy took her first drawing class in 2016 at Columbia Greene Community College. In 2017 she began taking art classes at The Woodstock School of Art and was introduced to abstract art in August of that year. That began her love affair with expressing herself with line, shape and color rather than with words on a page.

In 2020 Nancy was awarded the Ruth Cabrera Art Award for her pastel painting “Falling Light” in the 34th Annual International Open Exhibition of the Pastel Society of the West Coast. In 2022 she had her first Solo Art Exhibition at the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum in Woodstock, NY.