Bridget W. O’Brien (b. 1997) is a Canadian-American painter living and working in Bloomington, Indiana. She is currently an MFA candidate at Indiana University (2026). She received her BFA in painting from Purdue University and Seoul Women’s University in 2020. After the pandemic settled, she did a post-baccalaureate at the New York Academy of Art, showing most recently with the Waldron Arts Center in Bloomington, IN, and Mudhouse Arts in Agios Ioannis, Crete. She works primarily with oil, acrylic, and pastel.
Artist Statement:
My work investigates landscape painting through the language of the human body – riffing off of analogous forms found in human anatomy to achieve visual harmony. By growing and cultivating dyes, paints, and mediums, I reach to further synchronize my artistic practice with the cyclical lives of the plants, animals, and habitats that I paint. Inspired by the Transcendentalist Painters, The Group of Seven, and their progeny of sublime painters, I make these works to advocate for land reciprocity and preservation.
I use layers of diaphanous underpaint and pastel on panel to first sketch the observed landscape, and then welcome figures inside as they arrive compositionally. These paintings are inspired by plein air studies, personal film, and works of poetry and literature. I interweave figuration and abstraction to hem these two worlds together, forming non-linear trajectories of time, place, and body.