Bridget O’Rourke is a painter from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who also works from New York City. O’Rourke emphasizes the mark and width of line through repeated color contrasts that ultimately suggest an idea of illusionary space. The artist moves evenly between empathetic caricatures and pure abstract representations. O’Rourke’s medium extends to ink, thread, pencil, and masking tape – extending the idea of painting with these other materials.

Sisters (I) (2011) presents a negotiation of space where black and gray lines appear to cross-hatch over pockets of a colorful background. A sense of urban vertical structure appears consistently throughout The City (2011), which is built up with small areas of red, yellow and white while framed by gray, black and blue hues. O’Rourke’s drawing process introduces the figurative form with lines that first appear lost and fragmented, as seen in High Five (2007). In response to the intense relationship of pictorial grid and the painted surface, the artist has also cut up a select group of paintings and sewn them into thin book forms, tied together with thread and presenting a different viewing experience.

In 2011 Bridget O’Rourke completed her M.F.A. at Parsons The New School of Design. Since 2002 her art has appeared in several group exhibitions throughout New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont. In 2007 O’Rourke participated at the Vermont Studio Center located in Johnson, Vermont. The artist presented new work in June 2011 that appeared in the Bushwick Open Studios and 2084 at Cameo Gallery located in Brooklyn, New York. Bridget O’Rourke has been a member of the Kappa Pi Art Honors Society and in 2007, received The Daniel W. Tereshko Memorial Prize in Studio Art.

Contact O’Rourke via email, bridgetor16 [at] gmail [dot] com