Interview with Nicholas O’Leary

1. Tell us a bit about yourself — where did you grow up, and what was your childhood like? How did you start painting? Do you remember the moment when you realized that you would spend your life as an artist?

I was born in 1986 and spent my childhood in a small, sunny, seaside city in New Zealand, informally known as Gizzy.

During the long, lazy summers my sisters and I were encouraged to create things. My parents were always very supportive of any activity we tried to pursue. Time after time we tried to build overambitious constructions during the course of a single afternoon — these included treehouses, skateboard ramps and ziplines. My father had stacks of old wood and tools which we were free to use. The catch was, we would always have to begin each next project by removing and straightening nails that we used during the previous abandoned attempts.

My father also brought home pens and reams of used photocopy paper from his office with the a blank backside. I was really good at drawing block letters from an early age. I could make the block letters look 3d, and give them shading and drop shadows. Creating the heading on any assignment was my favorite part. My first art job was drawing the headings for the other kids in my class. Like a true artist, it was unpaid.

I was also good at drawing monster trucks. My childhood friend says I swapped him a monster truck drawing for an x-men card. He says he had planned to pretend he had done the drawing himself, but that I had signed my name in pen and he couldn’t rub it out.

During my high school years I was struck with the painting bug. I remember seeing the work of the older students on the walls in the art room and it was mind-blowing for me — I had never seen painting in person as good as the work the older students were doing. That was the moment I was hooked. I eventually ended up in the same art class as the older students I had admired.

We had free oil paint, and an open 10 Liter bucket of filthy turpentine where one would have to dunk their arm into to find a brush. There were very few rules in the art department, and the teachers pretty much left us to ourselves. We didn’t learn how to ‘paint’ in a traditional sense, but there was a group of students that was more interested in oil painting than graffiti.

For an hour and a half each week I got to hang out with my heroes in the very social, noisy and chaotic art department. It was a dream.

My school uniform was always dirty and my parents made it clear that I was only getting one set of the overpriced uniform. I ended up resorting to continuously having to paint my shorts black again with acrylic paint. The shorts almost stood up by themselves.

Even though I loved painting, I considered painting very much a social activity. I had always painted with my friends. Some nights my father would back his car out of the garage and my friend and I could paint in there until the early hours.

When I was 17 and had just finished school my Christmas present from my parents was a weekend workshop in oil painting with a visiting artist. I remember initially feeling disappointed when I found out my parents were serious, as I considered going to classes during the summer the opposite of what I enjoyed in painting, namely just hanging out with friends.

This workshop ended up being the first time anyone had given me any formal instruction in painting. Looking back, it was one of only a handful of times I have had formal instruction in painting. It turned out to be one of the best presents I ever got.

After that summer I started architecture school in New Zealand. It was a rather conceptual school so students could pretty much tinker with a variety of things, not necessarily what one would imagine as architecture. I was even painting some of my building designs, if one could even call them buildings at all.

Alongside architecture school I kept on painting. Having a few shows and managing to subsidize my studies a bit, before I finally graduated and moved to Bergen, Norway.

2. What are some of the highlights of your art career at the moment? Were there ever any low points, when you felt like giving up? If so, what got you through those moments.

After a childhood where I loved creating I would say my low point to date came around 2011, three years after moving to Norway, where I felt painting was not fun any more and had became a chore. I had begun to go down a detail heavy, work intensive path and the only challenge was the brute force willpower required to get through large, complex paintings. It was to impress people. But for me the best part was finishing.

Considering as I could be doing more creative work than this in the Architectural field and get paid better, my relationship with painting became bitter.

So I withdrew almost entirely from exhibiting and selling and just started to tinker around with paint again, like I did when I was younger.

I went and stayed with the Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum in 2012 for 6 weeks.

Odd loves painting, and I could see how much joy he got from painting something he was pleased with. I understood that for me to have any sort of satisfaction and longevity within painting I needed to get the joy of creation back that I had had as a child.

Odd painted in a way wildly different to me at the time. I had never painted from life before and I would have never considered limiting my palette, or even having any order in my palette at all. Suddenly I felt challenged. This way of seeing painting wasn’t about any sort of brute force. It was an exploration.

Watching paintings evolve on the canvas without any pre-planning work was difficult for me initially, but it was enjoyable. Finishing the painting wasn’t the best part any more. It was like finishing a good film, I just wanted it to keep going.

I was soon producing paintings again, but my motivations had been realigned. I was now painting for myself rather than for others.

I was no longer so active in promoting myself. I would exhibit if I was invited, enter a competition here and there, but rarely took any initiative more than that.

On that note, winning the William Bouguereau Award from the Art Renewal Center 2014/2015 Salon would probably be considered a career highlight for me. It was probably the first recognition I had got at all publicly in the few years since I had retreated.

But by this stage my highs and lows within painting had flattened out, into a state of tranquil enjoyment.

3. You are primarily known for your incredible plein air paintings — could you describe your process? Do you work exclusively on site, or do you finish the work in the studio later? What are some of the tools you use (travel easel, brushes, palette knives) that make it possible to work outside in a variety of weather conditions?

My foray into plein air painting began around this same time, in 2014. It was really just a fun little experiment to try out. I hadn’t seen many people painting outside before. That is hard to imagine, because I feel like I see plein air painting all the time on social media now. However it could just be confirmation bias.

To be completely honest, as soon as I tried plein air and found out how difficult it was, I was somewhat provoked.

The moving light, wind, mosquitoes and not to mention my own lack of ability. I also don’t own a car so I am either biking or walking to my locations. And all of this in Bergen, a coastal Norwegian city known as the rainiest city in Europe.

But Bergen is also incredibly beautiful. The city is surrounded by mountains and fjords, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the main past time for locals was hiking.

My days spent plein air painting are idyllic. I can take a packed lunch and be in nature after just a 5 minute walk from my apartment.

But how dare plein air painting be so hard! I was determined that I would figure it out.

I didn’t even look at it as painting, per say, but more like some sort of a sport or game.

So like any game I needed to start at an easy level.

I deliberately started with simple scenes, like looking over the sea at an island or a mountain. I started with tiny canvases and a limited palette. I realised that overcast days were comparatively easier as the light seemed more consistent.

The aim of the game was to make pictures that I could hang on my wall. This is still my goal. And of course, because this game is about painting en plein air, I do always finish my work on-site.

Yet, with time I realised that there needs to be variation in order to have a higher chance to displace the previous successful plein air paintings that already line my walls. The inconsistent weather in Bergen definitely helps with that. It wasn’t long until I realised I could be waiting months if I wanted to paint on a sunny day here.

A simple solution was duct taping an umbrella to my easel and weighing the easel down to the ground. Then I could paint in rain, wind and snow. And with some LED lights and some warm clothes I could paint during the dark days of the Norwegian winter.

Apart from that, my tools are deceptively simple:

-A standard Italian steel field easel, and a removable pochade box that fits to it (so that I don’t need to wipe my palette down when I put it back into my backpack).

-A hunting backpack. It has a big pocket between the backpack and your back that I guess is made for carrying a rifle. But it means I can simply slide in my easel, my umbrella, a tripod if needed.

-My brushes are cheap acrylic brushes, and I tend to use only a few brushes during a painting rather than a whole bunch.

But despite my best efforts, as you can imagine, I produce many a plein air painting that isn’t wall worthy.

If this is the case I would write off the painting, wipe down the panel and try to pin point why the painting didn’t work.

I realised that if I make too many paintings which I consider failures in a row, I will feel a bit down.

By the same note, if all my paintings are working then I am probably not progressing up through the levels as fast as I could be. So I have always aimed to get two plein air paintings out of every three I attempt, but it can vary.

Of course as I progress through this game I fall in love with nature more and more. A few months ago I did my first studio painting in more than a year of painting entirely outside.

I had also heard a rumour that Sargent said you could put him anywhere and he could make a great painting from the scene.

This ability had always eluded me.

When I first started plein air, I relied very heavily on the scene doing all the heavy lifting in the painting. If the scene was boring, the painting was boring. I would walk and bike around all day with my heavy backpack and often not even find anything to paint.

But as I progressed, the role of the scene and the role of the artist started to switch places.

Last summer I painted a painting from right outside the front door of my apartment, and it made it onto my wall. That was one of the personal highlights of my career to date. I finally felt like I had achieved that illusive task that Sargent had set, even though it was just once.

4. Who or what inspires you right now? Are there any artists, musicians or writers whose work speaks to you at the moment?

Obviously nature is a huge inspiration. Particularly the smaller, seemingly insignificant parts of it. The wind gently leaving it’s path across a still body of water. How moss on a tree trunk can be impossibly green. What does rain really look like?

I have a friend who has a childlike curiosity about nature and certain phenomena, and if you start him of on one of these topics he will go on all day.

I must say that I am also particularly inspired by other mediums of image making.

For example, as soon as I tried woodcut prints, hatching and outlines became where it was at. And it translated directly into my subsequent oil paintings.

When I see watercolour paintings I adore the way the colours bleed and run and I immediately want to reproduce some of that controlled chaos into my other mediums.

One hears that people can waste a lot of time on social media, but my social media is filled with artists that inspire me. I get to see what those artists are creating everyday and watch them as they develop. I do perhaps favour the artists where development is more evident than those churning out the same stuff over and over.

But there are really so many artists that I adore. I’m not even going to attempt to name drop them. The whole community seems to be making such good work.

When it comes to music, I am trash. My taste is all encompassing and I usually just listen to one song on repeat until I am sick of it, and then move onto another song which would usually be at the opposite end of the musical spectrum.

5. If you had a year with unlimited resources — both time and money — what would you do with it?

Ideally I’d want to give it to the people trying to save the world, but I assume it has to be on a project that I lead and I can’t just donate it to research or invest it.

At one stage I had started making a book with illustrations and advertisements for stupid business ideas. For example one idea was a protein shake made from the milk of really muscly cows. Just to give it some sort of marketing edge.

But one idea that I always thought would have been fun is a squash court combined with a pinball machine. So you take a physical squash court and now just pretend…

From the outside it is just a box, suspended in the air by many robotic arms. On the inside it is a full sized squash court filled with sensors and projectors and speakers.

The game is squash, but…

When you swing your racket it makes the noise of a lightsabre, or a the sound of a squealing pig, or whatever noise you program it to make.

When you run it sounds like you have squeaky shoes, or clanks like you are running in a full medieval suit of armour. And the floor senses your movement and accentuates it, making the room shake when you run, particularly if you have the medieval suit of armour mode enabled.

And if you hit the ball hard the whole room shakes even more. If you hit it really hard it’s like a huge blast, and the players will fall to the ground from the shock wave.

Sometimes you hit the ball into the wall and it doesn’t bounce back, it just gets sucked into a wormhole and shot out some other area on the court, just like a pinball machine. Sometimes the angles of the walls change so the ball doesn’t bounce the way you would expect it to bounce, and sometimes the size of the room changes, so the players are standing in a thin alley or a large hall.

It will also have AI commentators, that give the players way more credit than they deserve.

For example when you, Trek, do an average shot it will say “Bomchuggalugga Trek! What a hit! What an amazing shot, I’d like to see how Nicholas returns this.”

I’ll call it SassySquash (™) .