Tessa Greene O’Brien: Disintegrating Systems

In her most recent body of work, Tessa Greene O’Brien explores the breakdown of recognizable forms as a reaction to the current socio-political climate. Beginning with elements from architecture and the built environment, the artist obscures these grounding structures with chaotic, churning atmospheres. O’Brien provides us with fleeting glimpses of specific sites that have been flattened by the pressures of color and texture. The forms can no longer uphold a logical sense of space or place, and any realistic structures are rendered into abstractions. 

Tessa Greene O’Brien is a mid-coast Maine native, and received her B.S. in Fine Art from Skidmore College and her MFA from Maine College of Art. O’Brien has exhibited her work at Able Baker Contemporary and MECA in Portland, the Firehouse Center in Damariscotta, and currently is making work for Barba Contemporary Art Gallery in Palm Springs, CA. The artist recently won the Joseph A. Fiore Painting Prize, and has completed residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Hewnoaks Artist Colony, and Stephen Pace House. O’Brien is co-founder of the Portland Mural Initiative, a public art project pairing contemporary painters with wall painting opportunities around the state.