Helen O’Toole is a painter. She was born in County Mayo, Ireland, and grew up in a big family. As a child, she worked on the family farm and played Irish music. Later, she studied art at the Institute of Technology, Sligo, and the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. In 1996, she moved to the United States for adventure and to escape endemic unemployment. She completed her graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, 1987-1989, and spent the summer of 1989 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine. She later participated in residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Massachusetts; the Bemis Center, Omaha, Nebraska; and The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Ireland. She lived in Singapore from 1993 – 1995, teaching at LASALLE College of the Arts. O’Toole moved to Seattle in 1996 to teach at the University of Washington, where she is currently Professor of Art.
In 2016, O’Toole received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and a Contemporary Northwest Art Award. She has also received a Pollock Krasner Award, the Jack and Grace Pruzan Fellowship, and numerous other awards and research grants. Over the past 30 years, she has exhibited in national and international exhibitions. Her work is in the collection of the Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, and other public and private collections.
March 2023
