John O'Carroll
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Overview
John O'Carroll (b. 1958, Cornwall) is a contemporary artist whose practice is rooted in place, time and material. He divides his year between a studio on the Cornish coast and a winter studio in Egypt's Western Desert. He draws inspiration from two landscapes shaped by elemental force.
For over thirty years, O'Carroll has explored the expressive potential of abstraction, developing a visual language informed by geology, archaeology and the enduring presence of ancient cultures. Working across painting, drawing and mixed media, he builds compositions that hold the rhythms, textures and spatial qualities of the natural world — surfaces that invite contemplation of humanity's relationship with landscape and deep time.
His work is held in private collections internationally and has been exhibited extensively throughout the UK and abroad.
Most recently, O'Carroll travelled to the ancient city of Hampi in southern India, where granite boulder fields, temple architecture and living cultural traditions have become the catalyst for a significant new body of work. This developing series extends his ongoing investigation into place, memory and sacred geography, opening a dialogue between the monumental landscapes of India, Cornwall and Egypt.
His work is held in private collections internationally and has been exhibited extensively throughout the UK and abroad. O'Carroll has exhibited worldwide, including solo exhibitions with Roger Katwijk Gallery in the Netherlands and at Pan Amsterdam, as well as exhibitions at the Holly Solomon Gallery in New York and the Dutch-Flemish Institute in Cairo. He contributed to significant projects including the Colours of Oasis exhibition at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden (2012), and the Anthropocene exhibition at Cornwall's Eden Project. In 2005, he participated in the Alexandria International Biennial Discovering the Book, and his work has also been shown at the British Embassy and the residence of the Dutch ambassador in Cairo. He is collected by both private and corporate patrons — including Akzo Nobel, AMC, VUmc, Loyens & Loeff, Accenture, and the NCM British Headquarters in Cardiff.
Studios: Cornwall, UK + Western Desert, Egypt
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Works
John O'Carroll
WESTERN ISLES , 2026Gesso, natural pigment, copper leaf on panel with raw steel frame110 x 244cmFurther images
John O'Carroll is a contemporary artist with an interesting backstory in Egyptology. A robust art practitioner throughout his life, O'Carroll continues to divide his time between his studio gallery in...John O'Carroll is a contemporary artist with an interesting backstory in Egyptology. A robust art practitioner throughout his life, O'Carroll continues to divide his time between his studio gallery in north Cornwall, his winter studio in southern Egypt, and Amsterdam where he is represented by the Roger Katwijk gallery.
On first viewing O'Carroll's abstract paintings and mixed media wall pieces sit neatly within British and European modernism and yet they are set free from historical context. A master with pigment, O'Carroll's airy minimalist paintings are built from impressions of the spaces through which he has traveled. ‘Making' is fundamental to his sense of self and John can't imagine life without the flow of creative expression. Over the years O'Carroll has explored a range of traditional and modern painting techniques and his home-made paint from raw pigments has roots in his study of ancient civilisations. Artists and poets are often driven by what Carl Jung describes as the soul wound - in Greek mythology, the learned centaur Chiron was the healer who could not heal himself of the wound inflicted by the poisoned arrow of Heracles. John O'Carroll is drawn to arid landscapes and barren English moors which invite a man to scream into the void: When he was six John and his mother went to live in west Texas where he was surrounded by imposing vastness. As a teenager he saw the big and the wide of Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. O'Carroll's art whispers of these unpeopled landscapes which he distills into elegant abstract panoramas and richly pigmented roundels. John O'Carroll's work can be found in private collections and corporate collections such as those of Akzo Nobel, AMC, VUmc, Loyens & Loeff, Accenture and the NCM British Headquarters in Cardiff, The British Embassy in Cairo and the Netherlands Flemish Institute in Cairo.1of 32Installation shots
