Mary Lovelace O’Neal, I Live in a Black Marble Palace with Black Panthers and White Doves #8, ca. 1990

I can’t help but be overwhelmed by the energy and dynamism of this painting. Made up of thick impasto, with layers upon layers of reds, yellows, greens, and blues, blazing across the canvas, this work is an explosion of paint. Filled with images that morph in and out of abstraction — like the two red panthers in the foreground — it’s almost as though we are watching a scene play out that can’t quite be distilled. It’s full of motion; it layers both paint and stories.

Mary Lovelace O’Neal is a beloved Bay Area artist who taught at Berkeley for many years. Born in 1942 in Jackson, Mississippi, she was the daughter of a music director at the University of Arkansas and Tougaloo College, something that connects to the content of this painting. Because “I live in a black marble palace with black panthers and white doves” is a line from the opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, sung by King Balthazar, representing Africa. This was a production which her father staged every year and that Lovelace O’Neal starred in.

Painted in 1990, the artwork was also made in reaction to a trip she took to Morocco, a place she has described as “the biblical presence of North Africa.” Looking at it now, you get a sense of the heat and atmosphere of a place that clearly had such an effect on her.

A loaded and politically charged symbol, the panthers speeding through the canvas could allude to the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, founded nearby in Oakland, California.

I love reading this work like an altarpiece, in three sections, with the lighter yellow panel in the center differentiating itself from the others. Architectural in style, to me it feels like we’re walking into the Black Marble Palace.