Monkey vs. Shoes, print by Duffy O'Connor.

These images I produce, fantastic though they are, represent fragments of a story.  They are metaphors for real emotional events.  Specific narrative is obscured in favor of suggestion: A single image stands in for the memory and feeling of many events that have passed or that persist.  There is often a sense of something happening or about to happen that is uncomfortable, unsettling or even tragic.  When animals appear they provide a character with which to identify, and are often presented with an expression of naïveté or intelligence.  They are cute and sometimes humorous, but other symbols suggesting involvement in serious business appear alongside them.

A partially lost childhood has led me to return, at least in part, with these images.  They honor a feeling of loss experienced before it could really be understood.  The characters – monkey, little ghost, ice cream cone – generally represent innocence and vulnerability.  Their cuteness is intentional as is the danger or odd circumstances within which these characters find themselves.  I am in a way recreating events or sensations of the years of gradually increasing awareness; an awareness that grew  into a confused environment.  As a young adult I began with the self portrait to reveal a clear expression of self, and I have retained a measure of that sentiment in a veiled form as my work has matured.  

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote of childhood as a precious possession.  This sense of wonder changes with age but remains intact.  The emotional states, natural to a child, leave a residue of feeling and sensation that cannot be spoken but can be suggested in image.  This expression is my goal. To a child, a toy is a talisman, and can remain so for the adult whom that child becomes.  The child and adult are different aspects of the same person and that, I believe, represents my contemporary state as well as one long past.

In Pond, print by Duffy O'Connor

Stylistically, my work merges traditional academic study of drawing, painting and printmaking with the graphic appearance of comic books and commercial advertising.  As a method of producing the work, printmaking, with its emphasis on line to describe form, has always been a compelling technique for my images.  Drawing and painting enter the process when printmaking cannot create the appearance I need.  I am accustomed to beginning images in etching or woodcut but find more often that those techniques alone are inadequate. 

The logic to the way children create is a source of inspiration to me and feeds my creativity like nothing else.  It keeps me mindful that the desire to create is a simple and elemental compulsion that really needs no justification: It is ultimately a positive action.

— Duffy O'Connor

Duffy O’Connor received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking from the University of Iowa in 1994 and my Bachelor of Arts in History from Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, in 1990.  He currently teaches at Harrington College of Design and the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative.  He has held teaching positions with the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan, Grand Valley State University and the Hyde Park Art Center.