Oliver O'Connor Barrett

Oliver O'Connor Barrett (17 January 1908 – July 1987), better known as Connor Barrett, was a British sculptor, painter, graphic artist, educator, poet and composer. Most of his adult career and recognition was in the United States.

Life and art career

Oliver O'Connor Barrett was born in Eltham, London, England on 17 January 1908. He studied at Fircroft College in England but was largely self-taught as a sculptor.

Myself Emerging In 1980 Barrett published the book Myself Emerging, consisting primarily of selections of his poetry interspersed with photographs of his sculpture. The book is prefaced with the statement, "With age, my development as a man, and perhaps as a poet, seems to have accelerated. Feelings are more intense and, becoming more open. I receive their full impact, whether joy or pain. Nor do I feel the need to justify or make them consistent." An intensely personal side of Barrett is revealed in his early poems. First Love (1927) finds him longing to be "crushed beneath a last caress of your all too-powerful hand", while in Lonely One, written during World War II, the author wants to grieve, but is restrained from doing so by those who dictate "KEEP A STIFF UPPER LIP AND DON'T GIVE WAY! DON'T FEEL DON'T THINK DON'T BROOD DON'T BE."

In the book the reader can trace the development of Barrett's style from his early purely figurative work of the 1930s through the abstracting of his figures during the 1950s and 1960s and finally a return to the realistic portraiture in his last years. In looking at the body of work, poetic and sculptural, that is presented in the book it is clear that the themes that Barrett was interested in, spirituality, mythology, eroticism and a love of music, were ones that he was drawn to early in his life and never abandoned.

A poem "Isaak Speaks", written in September 1979, addresses the biblical story, where Abraham is so devoted to God that he is prepared to sacrifice his own son, although at the last minute an angel stops this from happening. In Barrett's short poem, "Being conceivable is deed enough" and the thought is enough to wreak the destruction. It ends:

Prizes and awards 1943 1st prize Art Association, New Orleans, 1943 1st prize New Orleans Arts and Crafts Club 1944 1st prize Art Association, New Orleans 1947 Fellowship at Yaddo 1948 1st prize 7th Annual Exhibition, Audubon Artists, New York. 1950 Gold Medal, 8th Annual Exhibition Audubon Artists, New York. 1953 Gold Medal for Sculpture, K.A. Artists' Annual, Riverside Museum, New York. 1960 Life Fellowship at International Institute of Arts and Letters.

Selected books Barrett, Oliver O'Connor (1950). Little Benny Wanted a Pony. Illustrated by Richard Scarry. Simon and Schuster. Barrett, Connor (1980). Myself Emerging; A Book of Sculpture and Poetry.