Born in New York City in 1966, O’Neil worked in the 1980’s as a studio assistant for the painter David Novros, whose Minimalist explorations of painting as object clearly left an enduring mark on his imagination.
O’Neil’s oil paintings express a joyfulness that is conveyed through his honing of a visual vocabulary influenced by Minimalism and geometric abstraction. Through the process of addition and subtraction O’Neil lays bares the intuitive search for color, proportion, and emotional gestalt that happens in the painter’s studio. He achieves an aged and ethereal effect, employing light to highlight different aspects of the buffed and painted surfaces. Dancing the line between abstraction and figuration, O’Neil's ambition is to contain everything that is in and of the world in a perfectly balanced and harmonious way, all within the limits of the picture’s edge.
Charles Thomas O’Neil was most recently featured in a solo exhibition at Howard Scott Gallery in New York City 2016. His work is featured in numerous private and public collections nationally and internationally, including the Hallmark Art Collection, Kansas City, MO, Time Werner Collection, New York, Smith Barney Collection, New York, NY, Altana, Wesel, Germany and the Portland Museum of Art, ME.