Illuminated & Adored

Paintings and Prints by Deirdre O'Connell and Fumiko Toda

Deirdre O'Connell
Deirdre O'Connell is a self-taught artist whose recent work has drawn from characters and scenes in plays by Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov. An award-winning stage actress, O'Connell has played numerous Chekhov women and finds their motivations and behaviors layered and complex. The paintings are jewel-like, multi media creations made from collages of her own paintings and drawings. Rich, brilliant hues and intense detail give each work the lucious quality of an illuminated manuscript. 

Fumiko Toda
Born in Japan, painter/printmaker Fumiko Toda lives in New York. Her artwork has an obsessive quality composed of intricate detail and repetition of form and pattern. Her paintings of butterflies, snakes and bugs are rendered with colors so vibrant as to appear as if they were ground from pure minerals or from the very insects themselves. Toda attributes her sense of design, space and line to her years in Japanese art schools, which emphasize such skills and craftsmanship. Toda counts as her artistic influences Odilon Redon and Jakuchu Ito.