From Ireland to Maine: Artist Christopher O'Connor

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to or watching Radio Maine. Today I have with me in the studio artist Christopher O'Connor. Thanks for coming in today.

Christopher O'Connor: Hi, Lisa. How are you?

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I'm doing very well. So we happen to be taping this on St. Patrick's Day, and you and I were talking that despite the fact that you were from Ireland originally, St. Patrick's Day is not as big a deal for you.

Christopher O'Connor: It's not a big deal. I mean, I do love the pageantry. Growing up, it was always fun because there were parades, but it's just never something I've completely gotten into. My friends growing up, you're a teenager, you're like, I don't know what this is about. Why are we celebrating this? So I just grew up that way, and I still don't quite understand what we're celebrating, but it's fun. It's a holiday. One of the good things about it is it's a very joyful holiday. A lot of people seem like they really have fun on St. Patrick's Day. Sometimes maybe a little too fun. But it's generally a good thing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Do you feel like, having moved to Portland in 2012, you've managed to bring some of your Ireland Irishness with you? Do you feel like you maintain a connection with your home country?

Christopher O'Connor: I do. Well, it's funny because I forget I have an accent. I mean, as anybody who has an accent probably does. So when I go out, every probably third person I bump into, it could be at the store. I was at the store last week and this gentleman stopped me as I was paying. And he's like, so what part of Ireland are you from? Again, I forgot I have an accent. I was like, oh, I'm from Dingle. And he's like, oh my God. He said, my son is down there at the moment, he's studying in Dublin, but he's visiting Dingle. And I get that all the time. So many people have traveled to Ireland, and even the place where I come from. So when I'm over here, I feel like I bump into Irish people all the time, and they're so curious. If they've never been back to Ireland, their parents were from Ireland but they've never visited yet, they're very excited to bump in and ask questions. And I love it. It's a great thing. Being Irish has always been a positive thing. I've really never run into people who find it a negative attribute. And generally there's a jolliness, I think, to being Irish.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, I'm interested in that idea of jolliness, because isn't there also a little bit of melancholy?

Christopher O'Connor: Oh, yeah. A lot of the music has it. One of my favorite pieces of music growing up was, I think it was called the Lonesome Boatman. And it's a piece of music with tin whistle, and it's extremely lonesome. I think it's about an old fisherman who is maybe out at sea at last, or else the fishermen have not come home that evening. That happened quite a lot, of course, which is ironic. What's a little ironic about things is a lot of Irish fishermen could not swim, and yet they would be out in these treacherous waters, in these little boats fishing. But that's how they did it. And actually, the area where I come from, there's the Blasket Islands in that area, and during the famine, that was one of the few places that wasn't affected by the famine because they mostly fished and they had their own community out on the island, and it was almost unaffected by it. It's pretty interesting.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So there's an interesting parallel between where you are now in Maine, with the coast and the islands off the coast, and where you originally are from.

Christopher O'Connor: Yes. And I felt a natural attraction to go visit the islands as soon as I got here. It was almost like reconnecting with something. And I read somewhere, and I don't know if this is true or not, but the geology of Maine and the geology of Ireland at one point, when there was a supercontinent, they were connected. And I like to think of it that way, because when I paint the rock formations in Maine, they're quite different from Ireland. But there's a connection at the same time. I'm remembering myself climbing along those rocks as a kid, picking up seashells and looking into pools and seeing the seaweed and the colors, and just getting lost in that. And that's kind of how I paint.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: How are the rocks different in Ireland?

Christopher O'Connor: Well, I think it's because there's so much moisture in Ireland. It's so green, but everything has moss on them. Even the rocks that are way up off the water where the water never reaches them, they're covered in mosses and lichens, and it's really beautiful to look at. There's so much life in there. And I think one of the things I really like about that too is there's a high degree of abstraction in there, but yet your mind is rationally telling you what this is and what that is, but you can get lost in it really quickly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: When I'm looking at your pieces, there's clearly a lot of lines to them. And at the same time, your technique is not necessarily based on straight lines.

Christopher O'Connor: No, no. The piece I'm working on right now, it's like a four by four foot piece, and I started drawing on Monday, and I have another day of drawing left on it. But I just love mapping it all out. Some of it will not stay. By the time I'm finished, you will see rocks and you will see water. But if you look a little closer, it's all very abstract in there. There's squiggles, there's circles, there's angles, and if you take the time to slow down and look at that, something opens up and expands, the rocks disappear. And it's almost like a state of mind.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: How did you get into the style of painting that you've chosen?

Christopher O'Connor: I think part of it is I didn't take a normal route with art. I never went to art college. And I think when I first started discovering art, it was through books, art books, because in the small town I grew up in, there's not a museum. There's not access to that many artists. So I read a lot of books, and books really opened my mind and made me want to travel and want to see museums all over the world. By the time I got to 18, finished with school, I did not want to go for four years somewhere, so I just got money together and traveled all over Europe. And that was really eye-opening. Just seeing how other cultures live and not understanding the language, you have to get the information in a different way, by looking, connecting with people even though you don't speak the language, and how that opens up a different way of looking. And then seeing the works you've always imagined in books, seeing them in the museums. When you see anything in the flesh, it's different and it's got a vibrancy and a feeling that you don't always pick up in a book. It kind of unleashes something. From a very young age, from 16, I knew I wanted to be an artist. Some people are born that way. I think they just have a strong impression of something. So that's what I did. I just started painting. I came back, I was in my mom's house for a while, and then I would just paint, paint, paint, paint. And then there was some person who had, I think it was a B and B or something like that, and they purchased like 20 paintings. So that allowed me to go off to Europe again and look at more art. And that's kind of how it has happened up to this point. I just get a break somewhere and I'm able to continue doing what I do. Even to this day, I get to do it every day, which is lovely. But because I didn't come at it through a route of going to college and all of those expectations and aspirations. A lot of people I meet, they can feel a little lost after coming out of college, because all the structures they had are now gone, they're let out into the world, and you have to get up in the morning and decide what you want to do. There's nobody maybe telling you, you need to do this. There's no class to go to. That can be kind of disorienting for people. And I never had that because I just had to paint. The books, the museums, I think I have a very romantic nature. So these things just made that go haywire.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Were there pieces or artists or places that you found particularly compelling?

Christopher O'Connor: Sure. There were two books I got when I was 16 from a friend of mine. One was Lust for Life, and the other was The Agony and the Ecstasy. And they were by Irving Stone, I believe. The Agony and the Ecstasy is on Michelangelo, and Lust for Life is on Van Gogh. Those books, at 16 years of age, I was like, oh my God, this is wonderful. They're dramatic, they're romantic, they're full of following your dreams but not knowing what's going to happen. It's very thrilling. And it filled me with an awful lot of drive and excitement to live a life like that. And then I started to discover the Impressionists and Georges Seurat, who's a pointillist. That was very important to me because my approach is, I like building things up slowly. Georges Seurat was one of these artists who, even though he died very young, he just created dots, dots, dots, dots. And he has an intriguing life because he lived with his mom most of his life, even though he died when he was maybe 30, I can't quite remember. He would paint these really large pictures and then try to figure out where he would hang them. Bit by bit he became well known. But the thing about Georges Seurat was he was very scientific about his approach. That part is not interesting to me. I'm not particularly scientific about my approach. It's very intuitive, because I think if Seurat had lived a little longer, he would have run into that problem of, what do you do after you have ironed out all of the kinks to everything? You need to alter it again to find the creativity, because the creativity will die if you know exactly how everything's going to fall into place.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Is that possibly one of the issues with being in the academic world, that things are laid out along a certain path based on what others believe to be important aspects of art, or really anything else? And then you get to the end of that path, and maybe all the questions haven't actually been answered.

Christopher O'Connor: Right. In most cases, probably not. And in fact, a lot of the questions are only coming up now because you're out on your own and you have to make all the decisions yourself. That's why it would be good to have a group of people around you who are doing similar things, and they have the same drive and the same motivation, because that's almost like a little startup there. That's where people get really passing on ideas. I've always been interested in the history where ideas seem to pop up at the same time in different places. It's like there's something in the ether, and people who have never known each other will start doing something along these similar lines. And I find that fascinating, that ideas could be the right time, the right place. They're ready.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I'm interested that even as a younger person, you were reading about artists who, some of whom would be considered troubled. I'm specifically thinking about Van Gogh. And that didn't concern you. You didn't think, oh, I don't want to be troubled like Van Gogh. You said, well, I'm willing to step into that space of not knowing.

Christopher O'Connor: Yeah. It wasn't a conflict initially for me because it was just so exciting to discover new stories. But over time, I started to wonder about an artist having the stereotype of the troubled life. They're broke, they're struggling. They're having to ask people to help them out, or to get materials. But I've never really believed in that aspect. I've never believed an artist has to be troubled to create great work. It's just like in movies where protagonists are always the dark ones, and they're the ones that engage us more for some reason. But I think it would be more interesting to have stories where the protagonists are actually not troubled, but leading people into great spaces and great areas. And that could be thrilling too. It doesn't always have to be, oh, this artist struggled all his life, never sold a painting, and now all his work is in museums all over the world, and priceless. I would like to be an artist who's making a living and enjoying what I'm doing, and not have to have a troubled past or personality to create work that is engaging.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: When I was listening to a book about Van Gogh, one of the things I was struck by was his belief in himself. That was a both/and. It was both very helpful for moving him forward in his artistic career, and also caused a lot of conflict with his family and people around him. So I wonder if there's a way to capture somehow that drive that he had, and not necessarily have it lead toward this brokenness and the trope of the troubled artist that you're describing.

Christopher O'Connor: Yeah. What's challenging sometimes is, and I think as an artist, and this really could be a lot of different types of people, but you can get so involved in what you do, to the exclusion of everything around you sometimes. And that can create troubles. So you have to create balance in life. And balance to me is about working daily, working a certain amount of hours daily, and then having time to also spend with your family and do things that need to be done outside of painting. But ultimately, I need to paint every day, because that seems to be the only thing that gives me true meaning about why I'm alive. And I don't even always have words to describe that, but hopefully some of it comes up in my work.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: You're the youngest of five.

Christopher O'Connor: Youngest of, I better be right about this. Sometimes small numbers can be trickier. Six. Four brothers and a sister.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Okay. Did anybody else in your family go into art?

Christopher O'Connor: No, they didn't. And that's the bizarre thing. Maybe not that bizarre, but there wasn't really a lot of art growing up in the town I grew up in. But one of the interesting things, my grandma was always making little things. We would go to the shoreline and look for shells, and then we would come home and wash them all. We had to cut them a certain way, and she would make dolls out of the seashells. And then she would also make pictures. She'd find a little postcard that she really liked, and then she would make a really big shell frame around it. She was great. She would put them all out in great detail, and she would organize everything first, and then bit by bit she would glue each one back in. She was industrious. She had a window in a shop in town, and then she would put them all in the window. It was around the time when Ryan's Daughter was being made, which was made just outside of Dingle. And she sold them all, and she kept selling them all. This was great, this was like extra money for her. But it was also like, somehow I was involved in the process later on in life. Initially when she started making them, I wasn't on the planet, but I would go with her because I was the youngest and keep an eye on things. We would just spend the day looking for shells. And I think that's part of why I also paint what I paint. It's your memories, the things that you spent great memories with, and almost recreating them, recirculating them into something new. Nobody I grew up with really did art. I had two friends who became artists too. And we kind of all bought a book each so that we could circulate them around with each other. But somehow my sister too, she won a competition in her art class, and she won a box of oil paints. She ended up giving that to me at like 15 or 16. And then my oldest brother Thomas, he would draw all of these Disney characters on our walls. So I had those influences. And as a child, those influences are very powerful, especially when they're close to you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I'm intrigued by what you're describing as this willingness to explore something that you don't rationally understand. This sense of going with your intuition and spending time being in a space that hasn't been carefully constructed for you, and the self-awareness that you must have, and the trust, I guess the trust in the process, they will say.

Christopher O'Connor: You totally have to have trust, and it's a thing you just develop over time. You have to have faith in what you do. And once you do, once you know it's all going to be okay at the end. It's interesting because art is one of these elusive things. People connect to different types of things, and there's every type of art out there. As creators, we make all sorts of things, and people are connected to all sorts of creations. For me, the way I paint, I think it very much describes my personality. I can really hone in on something, and then I have to pull back out again and see, what am I doing here? It's a lot of back and forth. It's almost like focusing a camera and then taking it out of focus so you can see it a little better. But I'm at a point now where I do trust myself, and even when I'm having a day where I can't paint a straight line, it's okay. I'm not really bothered by that because I know tomorrow I come down here and something else will happen. And I love that. I love trying to be carefree with what you're doing, even though you devote your whole life to it. You cannot take it too seriously. You've got to show up every day, but you cannot be too serious about it. Because if you are, you rule quite a number of creative aspects out. Sometimes when you're making something, you might completely take a pivot. And if you allow yourself to do that, you might just discover something new that you can add to your repertoire, which is highly exciting because it may not happen that often. Something that truly connects to you, that all of a sudden you're introducing to your work, and it just works in the way you paint or create.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So when you say that this in some ways reflects your personality, what does that mean?

Christopher O'Connor: That's a good question, because our personalities are always slightly changing, especially over time, over years. But I do think there's a core to your personality, and that, I would say, maybe doesn't change that much. And I feel like when I look at my paintings, I kind of see my personality in there. It's a particularness to things. If you ever come to my studio, I almost think of it as a laboratory. Everything is organized there because I don't want to spend time looking for things. I just want to paint. So everything is where I need it, and I can just go right over to my easel and start painting. One of the fun things is actually when I do run out of something and I haven't bought a replacement. That's actually when something new can happen for me, because I have to pick up either a different paintbrush or a different color now that I haven't used for ages, and all of a sudden that can spark something completely new. And that is part of my personality. I can repeat and do a similar thing for quite a while, and then it's almost like a trajectory in space, I hit against something. And that shifts me in a whole new direction. It can be the smallest thing, or it can be the biggest thing. There's so many variations on it. But for me, to get involved in a big painting is a wonderful place to be, because I could be gone for a month. Once you go down into your studio, and I like rituals, I like to do a similar thing every morning so that I can get into a headspace. Over time, you can get to that place where you can just say, okay, I'm painting now, and off you go. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, okay, it's not working today, go take a walk or go out into the garden and plant something. But it's different every time. It's interesting. I don't know if you ever saw the movie Contact with Jodie Foster. She's in a shuttle, something where it's about to take off, but it doesn't, and the experience she had was different from what everyone else was seeing. She went off somewhere and she had this amazing experience, but when she came back, came out of the shuttle, everyone was like, no, it failed. It never went anywhere. And sometimes painting is like that. You're sitting there, anybody who comes down and just sees you, you're just sitting there. But you could be off anywhere as you're painting, and that's really fun.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Do you think that we give ourselves the space to engage in that sort of activity on a regular basis?

Christopher O'Connor: That's a good question. I think not. And I think things have really sped up now. I say that because whenever I go to one of the islands and I spend a night there, my goodness, the change in tempo in your mind. You can completely relax and you're out underneath the stars in the evening. There's no cars, there's no sounds, and it's really quite nice. You can really slow down. And that makes me realize, gosh, actually we are all sped up. It's really hard to slow down sometimes because there's always a bucket list of things to do. And painting for me is one of those spaces where I can close the door on that for a little bit and go into a place.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I know during the pandemic we were seeing a lot of people who were re-engaging with nature and going to the national parks in the United States. And probably this was a global phenomenon, I would say. And now people are starting to go back to work, and work is starting to be back on site, and people are starting to get reconnected to everything electronic and maybe fewer things that are in nature. How do you continue to stay connected? Is it the rituals you're describing?

Christopher O'Connor: It's the rituals to a degree. Keeping them daily keeps you in that place daily. One of the things I have always done is gardening. And that really helps to center me. If I'm having not a great painting day, I can just pop out into the garden and do a couple of hours of something, and then I can come back in and try it out again. It's so therapeutic to go out and have your hands in the soil and plant things and watch things grow. And while you're out there, you're looking around, you might see the light hitting a tree in a certain way, and that just spurs inspiration, and you're like, okay, I need to go in and paint. There's just this feeling when you see certain things where you're like, okay, I need to go back in now and work on a few things. Not necessarily that tree or that light, but you just have been inspired again by something, that thing that's around you at all times, wherever you go.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I'm always intrigued by putting something in the right type of soil with the right type of light, with the right environment, and seeing what happens. And I love the fact that really when you are working with plants, or really any living thing, you're not necessarily doing anything other than creating the possibility that it's going to thrive or not. For me, I have a little planting bench downstairs, and I'll go downstairs and I'll say, oh, those little spider plants that I took and put in the soil, are they going to thrive? Are they not going to thrive?

Christopher O'Connor: Yeah. And it's interesting, sometimes my biggest success with planting is when I leave them alone. Sometimes I overwork things. And these are lessons you can carry through with your painting. There's been many instances where I'm working on something and I'm like, okay, I think this is done, but I'll push it a little further. And sometimes pushing it a little further is great. You discover something new and you maybe make the painting into a better thing. And sometimes you just destroy it because you have overworked it. But those are lessons, and it's okay, you just start another painting.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Yes. I found the same thing in working with people, because that's mostly what my other job is, is working with people. There's the inclination to want to have such control, where you want to keep going back to that person and saying, but wait, can we explore this a little further? And sometimes what you need to do is just leave it alone, so that they can process things on their own and come to whatever new space they need to come to. Sometimes you really can't control what goes on.

Christopher O'Connor: Yeah, totally true. Sometimes it just is what it is, and maybe either you can't, or you're not the person. But I definitely agree with that sense of space, giving a space, and just allowing it to unravel, or, what's the word, open up and just be whatever it's going to be. I find that in painting a lot, because I draw out my paintings in quite some detail, and yet by the time I'm finished with that, it's actually just the start. Now once I start adding color, I'm really trying to create this tension between the color that I add and the lines that are already there. Some of the lines will disappear, and some of the color will take over in parts. But there's such a strong sense of line that I'm never worried about that part disappearing. I'm always trying to get it to a place where the line becomes the color, the color is the line, there's no differentiation between them. And that's what creates the strength of the work, that you can get lost in between. For me, like with the Coastal Water series, the rocks are a way into the painting. Total abstraction sometimes can be intimidating for people, because sometimes a lot of us are trying to find that one thing we can connect to and see and go from there. So with the rocks, for me, that's what that is. It's an opening into someplace. And once you get past the rocks and go into the painting, it's almost like you can just wander off into all of these little places like I did as a child, going to all the pools and picking up seashells. And that's a beautiful space because it's very open, and there's no judgment there, and you're just discovering things and looking at things. And I think as a painter, one of the challenges for me is to create a painting that from a distance looks interesting, and then you go up close to it, and it's still interesting, that it still keeps its tension from up close, because that's quite challenging to do. I have had experiences in museums, going to the paintings and seeing them in books and being so excited to see them, and then seeing them in person and going, okay, interesting. But it didn't quite have, when I went up close to it, the same tension that I wanted. And there was one instance where I was in, I think it was the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and I was looking at a Nicolas de Staël, the French painter, and it was called Orchestra or Symphony. It was a very abstract piece. I was looking at it, and I was tired, so I just sat down looking at it, and then maybe after 10 minutes I started laughing and I could see the image, I could see the painting. I was blown away that I was looking at it initially and just not seeing anything, and nothing was really connecting me, but I was tired, so my critique was down a little. So I was just looking at it openly. And then I saw the painting. That was really interesting to realize, and this is probably back in my early twenties, that sometimes you come to things with a lot of preconceived notions, and they can block you from seeing what's in front of you. So that painting was really interesting, to allow me to see that. And I've never forgotten that impression I had, that it made me laugh out loud. I'm not the kind of person who generally laughs out loud, but that was kind of fun.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: It is also really interesting to think you're going to a museum because there's a piece there that you've always wanted to see, and then getting there and maybe having that not be something you're actually that interested in, but something else that you wouldn't necessarily have expected to draw you in.

Christopher O'Connor: Yeah. I've had many instances where I've looked at paintings and initially not seen the painting. I've looked at it and been confused about what I'm looking at. And then over time, the painting I'm looking at, I'm like, oh, that's what that painting is. How did I not see that? It is plain as day now. And once you see it, you can't unsee it, which is fascinating. It's always so interesting, how you look at something, and differentiating that about how you think about something, because there is a difference. The rock paintings I'm doing right now, I like working on the larger pieces because the largeness allows you to have that feeling of, you're looking at something, you generally know what you're looking at, but then the more you look at it, other things start opening up and you get a little confused, but not in a bad way. You're just confused because you're like, oh, what is that? And then if you carry off with that, you can go off into this world. I find it a world of shapes, a world of color, that I think is very integral to us at a very basic level. We connect to that place, because I don't think there's, as soon as we form images of something, or words, that's when I feel like our mind starts to create scenarios that aren't always there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I remember going to see the Mona Lisa and having it be surrounded by people, you couldn't even get that close to it. And it was so much smaller than I thought that it was. And just being struck by the fact that by the time I actually saw it in person, there were so many layers between me and the piece that was actually hanging on the wall, that it would have been better if I had just kept it in my mind as something that I had seen in a book.

Christopher O'Connor: Yeah. I totally understand what you're saying. I had the same experience. I actually got frustrated, I just moved on. I think I saw it for a split second, but there were so many people it was not enjoyable. But then what's interesting is, that was your preconceived notion, to see the Mona Lisa. You saw it. It's not so much that the painting was okay, just the experience wasn't great. And then you move on to another part of the museum and you discover something you'd never even known about. Again, it might be a painter or a painting that is very obscure and not very much in the history books, but it could actually reveal something to you a lot more than the Mona Lisa might.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, we're excited that you've joined the Portland Art Gallery, having been in Maine since 2012.

Christopher O'Connor: 2012, yes. Well, I'm pretty excited I've joined the Portland Art Gallery too, because I've always had my eye on the Portland Art Gallery. Having space in Portland to represent your work is a great thing, because living here, I'm only a half an hour outside Portland in Windham. I always like going into Portland, and if there's an opportunity to see art, the Portland Art Gallery is in a perfect location. I think it will allow my work to be seen by a lot more people, which is always a good thing. And it's always exciting to show your work, because it really is lovely to hear people's responses, even if it's critical. It's fine. When you put work out, you have to be okay with receiving back information that might not be what you want to hear.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, that's a very balanced and considered response to criticism that I don't think everybody shares.

Christopher O'Connor: Sure. At a younger age, I would blow a trumpet when I got some bad news about something. You do that for a while, and then you realize, well, that's just silly. You've got to move on from that. So hopefully I think I have. But criticism is, again, like when you're younger, if you can find somebody to show your work to that you trust, and you value their work, and if they can give you criticism in a very constructive way, that's actually great. That's really productive, if you're open enough to receive it. If they deliver it in a certain way, you can be open to receiving it. That's actually really informative if you take it in. Because the more you show your work and the more you interact with your audience and the public, it is a back and forth. Even though I produce the work on my own in my studio, when you present it to the public, now it's out there, and you really have no control, and you shouldn't really have to have control over it. Some people will love it and some people will not be connected to it. And that's perfectly fine, because I experienced that myself with art.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I think I was reading recently about the idea of narrative, and the idea of a story and the intersubjectivity that occurs between the person who creates the story and the person who reads the story. And it's that interesting space where somebody has put something out there and somebody else is letting it into their sphere. And you're right, there really isn't a control.

Christopher O'Connor: Right. And I don't think there should be, because if I think of myself, all of the artists that have influenced me, if they had decided to not show their work for whatever reason, I would maybe be a different artist, I don't know. But I have loved having the freedom to look at all of these artists over the centuries now. And sometimes the artists that you wouldn't think could influence you a lot has a big influence on your work. As artists, I think we're all creating on top of what has already been created. And that's a wonderful thing. I think it's fascinating that you could give one subject to 10 artists and it will all be different. That is just amazing as a human endeavor, that we can do these things. We are also creative, I think, if we just allow the space to be there. And creativity shows up in everything. I was always fascinated as a young teenager looking at cultures around the world and seeing how they made everything particular, their clothing, their jewels, their utensils were all embellished. They were all for the glory of something great. And I found that fascinating.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, I've enjoyed our conversation today, and I'm sure people will enjoy seeing your work at the Portland Art Gallery, and I hope that you and I have a chance to interact at a future opening, perhaps.

Christopher O'Connor: Oh, I think definitely. I look forward to it, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I've been speaking with artist Christopher O'Connor. We're glad to have him joining us at the Portland Art Gallery, and I encourage you to take the time to get to know his work at the gallery or online. I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you've been listening to or watching Radio Maine. Thank you, Christopher.

Christopher O'Connor: Thank you, Lisa.