Brian O'Donovan
Brian O’Donovan is a Killarney born artist, now living in Cork, who’s artform is truly unique. He uses two different types of media to create his artwork – beads and acrylic paints.
Using tens of thousands of tiny beads to create large works of art portraying some of the world’s most iconic figures. The artform is a fusion of mosaic work and pointillism, using only five basic colours, the primaries. They have a tactile element to them, as each bead can be individually touched creating a great sense of depth.
They are painstakingly intricate to complete with the majority of the pictures having in excess of 30,000 hand placed beads. When standing up close to one of these images, it is not perfectly clear what you are looking at, visible only are thousands of coloured beads.
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As you step back though everything starts to become clearer until the five colours start to fuse, blend and mix into each other forming colours that aren’t actually there at all. At the optimal distance the illusion is finally
complete, a perfectly toned and focused portrait, something very different and more than a bit
special.
Brian then evolved this technique by using acrylic paints in a similar way to create portraits and
landscapes.