Artist Bio

Helen O’Toole is best known for her large-scale abstract oil paintings. She was born in County Mayo, Ireland, where she attended local schools, worked on the family farm and played Irish music. O'Toole studied art in Sligo and Dublin in the early to mid-1980s. In 1986, she packed her belongings and moved to the United States in search of adventure and to escape endemic unemployment.

She pursued graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. O’Toole has participated in residencies at the Studio/Casa Siena in Italy (2025), the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland (1992), the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA (1991-1992), and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE (1993).

From 1993 to 1995, she lived in Singapore and taught at LASALLE College of the Arts. She spent a year working in a studio in Brooklyn, New York, before moving to Seattle where she joined the faculty at the University of Washington. She currently serves as the Floyd & Delores Jones Endowed Chair in the Arts.

For the past 33 years, O’Toole has exhibited in national and international exhibitions. She has received numerous prestigious awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2016), a Contemporary Northwest Art Award (2016), a Pollock Krasner Award (2013), the Jack and Grace Pruzan Fellowship (2009-2015), and the Wyckoff Milliman Endowed Fund, among others.

Artist Statement

My paintings relate my experiences and observations of growing up in the west of Ireland in the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. The traces of time evidenced in the landscape of my youth are a repository for our collective memories of the past and its persistent influences on the present: boundaries, control, oppression, trauma, and the insidious rumors surrounding the people I heard about or knew. My paintings consider the often-unspoken harshness of rural life, the people displaced from their homes and land by injustices and cruelty at the hands of an oppressor, and the implications of a post-colonial condition contributing to a generational sense of inadequacy.

Over the past ten years, my paintings have proffered the form and conventions of history painting through color, space, structure, and the materiality of paint. Migration (2015) memorialized the sufferings of people expelled from their ancestral lands and dwellings and forced to migrate to other places within Ireland as a direct result of English colonization. The declaration “to hell or to Connaught” is attributed to Oliver Cromwell, who enforced mass migration within the country. Connaught (the west of Ireland) was considered inferior and much less desirable than the other three provinces in Ireland. Pirate Queen (2021) commemorates the sixteenth-century Irish woman known colloquially as Granuaile (Grace O’Malley), whose story embodies the historical and rebellious doggedness of formidable, independent women. Trace (2021) and Rumor (2022) deal with persisting stories of hardship that permeate land holdings I was familiar with and their ongoing impact over generations. I frequently use the tropes of romantic landscape painting as a lens to relate to the history of settlement, expansion, and oppression. History painting has often glorified the power of the church, the state, or the painting’s possessor. My paintings instead memorialize the past, paying tribute to my ancestors who worked the land or were displaced. In my paintings, I acknowledge the past and the collective implications of our darker histories, where I lean into potent tropes of historical landscape painting to depict these collective memories.

Helen O’Toole, December 2024

Education

1989      Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture

Skowhegan, ME

1989      Master of Fine Arts, Painting/Drawing

School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1986      Bachelor of Arts, Painting/Drawing (1st class honors)

National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland

1985      National Diploma in Fine Arts, Painting/Printmaking
(distinction)

Institute of Technology, Sligo, Ireland

Public or Institutional Collections

Portland Art Museum, OR

Capital One, Richmond, VA

Swedish Hospital, Seattle, WA

Mc Kinsey &CO., Chicago, IL

Amdahl Corporation, Hinsdale, IL

Tuthill Corporation, Hinsdale, IL

National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland

Regional Technical College Sligo, Ireland

Selected Bibliography

2022      Bryant, Elizabeth. Gail Grinnell, Helen O’Toole,
Tom Gormally. Review.

Art Access. May 

2019      Lennon, Joseph, Weathered Together

Stanek Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, May 3-June 29 (catalog)

2016      Laing-Malcolmson, Bonnie, Contemporary Northwest Art
Awards

The Portland Art Museum (catalog)

2013      Pollman, Lisa. Oil Paintings Uncover Ancient Connections and
Mysteries

The Seattle Vine. February

Rumold, Danila. Beyond The Void.

Contemplative Process. February

2012      Bigman, Alexander. Irish Art in America: ‘Amid a Space
Between’ at SFMOMA Artists Gallery.

ZYZZYVA, April

Rumold, Danila. Amid a Space Between.

Contemplative Process. March

2009      Davidson, Dave R. A quartet of evocatively murky painters
muddy the wall of Kittredge Gallery.

Tacoma Weekly. November

2006      Hackett, Regina. Review.

Seattle Post Intelligencer. March 17

1999      Ó Cuív, Ruairí. A few thoughts provoked by painting.

Sligo Art Gallery Exhibition brochure. August

1995      McQuaid, Sali.  Atmospheric. Review.

Artist Writer. February

Ewart, Mark. Living Landscape. Review

Irish Times, August

1994      Artner, Alan G. Two more Chicago painters are guided by the
light. Review.

Chicago Tribune. December 2

1992      Teevan, Colin. New Paintings.

Sazama Gallery Exhibition Brochure. September

Yood, James. Chicago. Helen O’Toole. Sazama Gallery. Review

Art Forum. December

1991      Hixon, Kathryn. Chicago in Review.

Arts Magazine, June

McCracken, David. Gallery Scene. Review.

Chicago Tribune, April 5

1990      Fallon, Brian. “Springboard” of Irish Life. Review

The Irish Times, February 8

1988      Anderson, Tonnia L. Review

Gallery News, SAIC, November

Lautman, Victoria. Artistic License.

National Public Radio. November

1987      Dunne, Aidan. Irish Women Artists,

From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day. P69

1986      Fallon, Brian. GPA Awards Exhibition. Review

Irish Times. October

Dunne, Aidan. Art Student Vision and the Restorer’s Art.

Irish Times. June                 

Academic Appointments

2014 -present       Professor, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

2002 - 2014         Associate Professor, University of Washington,
Seattle, WA

1996 - 2002         Assistant Professor, University of Washington,
Seattle, WA

1993 - 1995         Full-time lecturer, LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts,
Singapore

1999/2004/2024 University of Washington Rome Program in Art and
Art History

Visiting Artist, Talks, and Panels

2025      Speaking of Art

Lecture, Horizon, House, Seattle, WA

Creative Inspiration in Writing and Visual Art

Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum, Conversation with
Emer Martin and Catherine Callanan, moderator
Fidelma McGinn

Gallery Talk, Rupture

J. Rinehart Gallery, Seattle, WA

2023      Artist Talk – Politics of Memory, BA Dissertation Seminar,
MA Fine Art Student Critiques, MA in Fine Arts Symposium,
Film Screening Panel Discussion

University of Singapore, La Salle College of the Arts,
Singapore

2022      Artist Talk and Painting Workshop

University of Arkansas, Little Rock, AK

2022      What Was: Unmarked, (two artist talks)

San Juan Islands Museum of Art, WA

2021      Artist Talk, Massachusetts College of Art, MA

2016      Artist Talk, Portland Art Museum, OR

2014      What Makes its Presence Known, panel - Josephine Halvorson
and Emily Gherard 

Puget Sound University, Tacoma, WA

2013      Promotion Lecture,

Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, WA

Conversations with Painters, The Sublime, discussion with
Gary Carpenter

Workshop, Olympia, WA

Visiting Artist and Artist Talk, Puget Sound University,
Tacoma, WA

2012      Conversations with Painters, Artist Talk, 

Jordan Wolfson Workshop, Olympia, WA

Artist Gallery Talk, SFMOMA Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2009      Gathering Image, Fugitive Form, Artist Conversation

Kittredge Art Gallery, University of Puget Sound, WA

2007      Visiting Artist and Artist Talk, University of Alaska,
Fairbanks, AK

Artist Talk, Errew National School, Co. Mayo, Ireland

2000      Artist Talk, Chatham College, Pittsburgh, PA

1998      Artist Talk and Juror, Columbia Basin College, Pasco, WA

1996      Faculty Lecture Series, Artist Talk

School of Art, University of Washington, WA

1995      Visiting Artist and Artist Talk, Malaysian Institute of Art,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia