ROBYN O'NEIL

Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1977, O’Neil creates vast, intricately detailed worlds that fuse humor and tragedy, the intimate and the apocalyptic, blending technical mastery with profound emotional resonance.

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Her work first gained widespread international attention with her inclusion in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. She has since received numerous major awards, including grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Artadia, and the Hunting Prize.

 

O’Neil has been the subject of significant traveling museum exhibitions, including a mid-career survey WE, THE MASSES at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

 

Her drawings reside in more than fifty prominent public collections worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Menil Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and many others.

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In 2010, O’Neil participated in Werner Herzog’s inaugural Rogue Film School. During a memorable session, Herzog presented a slideshow of her drawings and named her a poet. Among those present was Irish filmmaker Eoghan Kidney, who was profoundly struck by the work. He soon proposed a collaboration, directing the award-winning animated short WE, THE MASSES, for which O’Neil served as writer and art director. The film was supported by a prestigious FRAMEWORKS Grant from the Irish Film Board.

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For over a decade, O’Neil has also hosted the extraordinary podcast ME READING STUFF, an intimate and genre-defying series in which she reads poetry, literature, essays, and letters with raw honesty, humor, and emotional depth—further extending her distinctive voice across the cultural landscape.