“O’Kane, whose rare ability to capture the observable world was apparent even in his teens, chose a path in art that is both precise and poetic.” - Teresa Annas from her 2018 essay on O’Kane’s 50 Year retrospective, “Five Decades: A Devotion to Realism”
Tim O’Kane is a Virginia resident, working for his entire adult life as an artist, teacher, musician, photographer, writer and garden designer.
The recipient of numerous awards, grants and fellowships from organizations such as the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and The Virginia Commission for the Arts, he is best known for his contributions to the realm of contemporary narrative art, his drawings and paintings focusing on the figure. But his work also includes portraits, cityscapes and landscapes of Italy where he has traveled often and, as well, his more recent hyper-realistic still-life subject matter.
Recently he has been involved in large commissions with UVA’s Colonnade Club for the 200th anniversary of the laying of the University Cornerstone and with Monticello, creating botanical drawings and paintings of the plants, the flowers and vegetables from the restored gardens Jefferson began in the 1770s.