O’Neal’s influences primarily derive from the late impressionist painter, Joaquin Sorolla. O’Neal paints with the same drive to capture his visual field, which includes intimate portrayals of his family and community, and the objects and spaces they own. These paintings render specific scenes that express a deep affect of reverence and veneration for quotidian people, places, and things. O’Neal’s perspective comes precisely from his standing point as his means of documenting and sharing tangible vignettes of what he sees.

These works provide detailed impressions of present and past realities of people in a sense of place. Nature, childhood, fatherhood, motherhood, and adulthood, are all reflected in these works with quiet stillness and are manifested in relation to the poetic tension of displacement, self-expression, and bondage. A suite of paintings depicts six portraits of persons of varying degrees in relation to the artist, including one painting of a Golden Trumpet tree. O’Neal takes pleasure in convincing others of the beauty in the world as a means of shifting perspectives towards a positive appreciation for life. Each painting is intended to show the subject in their most pure, natural, and honest form, yet the details of each subject give context to who this person is and what they represent or where they come from. 

Each painting is its own visual story but they all connect in their ability to compose the beauty of the past, present, and the continuous. The questions of what and who is of value, what and who is consistent, and how that shapes us is posed in this presentation of documentary paintings.

Reginald O'Neal holding As I Am (Study), 2021
 
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In I Love You, Man Bernadette Despujols paints the closest men in her circle. The paintings are a departure from her usual depictions of women in paintings. In previous paintings, Despujols positioned herself as the subject of her paintings although they were portraits of anonymous unconscious women sourced from pornography made by men. Holding the belief that to be a woman makes other people uncomfortable and ultimately poses a threat to men she turns her gaze and paints the cishet men in her life: friends, lovers, family. Despujols uses the portraiture of her male subjects to experience her relationships with deeper intimacy. Objectification and intersubjectivity (the relation or intersection between people's cognitive perspectives) ebbs and flows between the painter and the painted. She objectifies the men in the paintings at times, focusing solely on one body part or their bare skin and bodies, but the men pose for the pictures with awareness and dignity. Nothing is stolen from them; Despujols may want to position these men ironically as muses but the truth is she defeats the irony of it with pure affinity and care towards the people she paints, leaving the men to decide what they want to wear and show of themselves. In the act of portraiture she experiences the vulnerability of these men through their quiet shyness or awkwardness with themselves, ways that would otherwise challenge the presumed status quo of manhood: tough, aggressive, aloof, qualities of patriarchy that, to Despujols, imprison both men and women in a cycle of violence. The paintings are formally infused with skewed perspectives, foreground and background foibles, and blank, paintless spaces furthering the playfulness she captures by being around the men she loves.
 

Installation views of Reginald O'Neal's and Bernadette Despujol's solo exhibitions at Spinello Projects
Photos by Michael Lopez