Mary Lovelace O’Neal

Mary Lovelace O’Neal (February 10, 1942 – May 10, 2026, Jackson, Mississippi) is an American painter, printmaker, mixed-media artist, and arts educator whose work bridges abstraction, figuration, and political memory. Active since the 1960s, she has developed a distinct visual language shaped by Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, and Black cultural and political life, using painting and printmaking to explore race, gender, joy, mythology, history, and the sublime. Her work is at once personal and public-facing, often moving between gestural abstraction and references to social struggle, civil rights, and African American experience.  O’Neal earned her BFA from Howard University in 1964 and her MFA from Columbia University in 1969. While at Howard, she was involved in the civil rights movement, and that history of activism continues to inform the emotional and political force of her practice. Across more than six decades, she has experimented with scale, surface, and materials, creating paintings that can feel monumental, intimate, improvisational, and sharply reflective all at once.  She taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1978 to 2006 and later became Chair of the Department of Art Practice, helping shape generations of artists while sustaining her own studio practice. Her work has been exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, including solo and featured presentations at SFMOMA, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Mnuchin Gallery, Marianne Boesky Gallery, and institutions and exhibitions connected to the Whitney Museum. She is recognized as a major figure in postwar and contemporary American art whose work has received renewed institutional attention in recent years.  She taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1978 to 2006 and later became Chair of the Department of Art Practice, helping shape generations of artists while sustaining her own studio practice. Her work has been exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, including solo and featured presentations at SFMOMA, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Mnuchin Gallery, Marianne Boesky Gallery, and institutions and exhibitions connected to the Whitney Museum. She is recognized as a major figure in postwar and contemporary American art whose work has received renewed institutional attention in recent years.