How did you develop your skills and craft?
Constant drawing. Working with found objects to create sculptures and installations without a lot of instruction. By creating objects for specific outdoor locations I began to see how sculpture can be an aid to memory, as I had begun to read about mnemonics and the writings of Fr. Matteo Ricci, S.J. by then. The studio courses at university (York University, Toronto) I learned to become skilled at welding, basic fabrication, forge work, and carving.
My secondary school art education was also great in terms of gaining drawing and carving skills. Discipline and the gaining of advanced physical art skills was not strong at the university level, so this is where taking a music degree stood me in good stead as the focus there was on structure and discipline, so then it was a process of finding a way (through making and drawing) of transferring my musical skills into the visual arts.
Taking a music degree was the best thing I ever did to help me advance my visual arts skills and music has remained a strong influence in my studio practice to this day. Then there was studio work, and I am now approaching my thirty first year as a full time working studio artist. Developing your skills and powers of conception never stops.
Which artists, if any, have influenced you?
Several. Picasso. Ancient sculpture and iconography. Calligraphy. Musical notation generally. Surrealism, Max Ernst and Remedios Varo in particular. Modernism generally in terms of having useful tools for creation. Medieval esoteric drawings, Mogul courtly painting, mnemonic drawings from medieval Christian authors have all provided me with instruction. My mother’s paintings of natural scenes were always there. Dancers and musicians have influenced me just as much as visual artists, whether it be Flamenco dancing or Jimi Hendrix or Beethoven string quartets. Irish music such as sean os singing also influenced me in terms of my approach to the creation of three dimensional visual phrasing in sculptures and how those shapes/phrases resolve. The monk/artists who created our greatest illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Kells were also a massive influence on my visual arts. I am also a student of rhetoric so that is an ongoing effort which always bears fruit.
See more of Farhad O’Neill’s work here: farhadsculpture.com
