Jack O’Connor (b. 1996) first studied Latin and Spanish philology at Fordham University where he graduated from in 2019. He is a classically trained painter from Natick, Massachusetts whose work reflects a deep commitment to craftsmanship, historical technique, and emotional sincerity. From 2021 to 2025, he studied at the Florence Classical Arts Academy mainly under professors Sergei & Svetlana Kurbatskaya, Andre Piankovsky, Arsenii Nefedov, and Yuri Dyaltov, immersing himself in the rigorous Russian academic tradition. 

Since beginning his formal training, O’Connor has exhibited at Evac Gallery in New York City (2022), the Carrousel du Louvre’s Salon International d’Art Contemporain in Paris (2023), in the Almenara Fall Online Exhibition (2024), where his diploma work, "The Witching Hour," was featured, and most recently again in the Almenara Fall Online Exhibition (2025) alongside his self portrait at 28. 

Driven by a lifelong admiration for the Old Masters—especially Velázquez and Rembrandt—his work bridges academic draftsmanship with a more restrained, Baroque approach to color and atmosphere. After growing dissatisfied with the highly chromatic palette of his early training, he looked to painters such as Anders Zorn, Rembrandt, and Velazquez’ palettes and adopted a much more limited palette based mostly on earth tones and mostly replacing his blues with ivory black as much as possible in order to focus mainly on achieving the correct tonal and temperature harmony rather than achieving precise but disconnected local colors. Every canvas is a work of love for him as every canvas is hand-stretched, glued, and primed using 17th century Spanish and Flemish techniques in order to ensure the underlying chromatic harmony and longevity of his paintings. 

At the core of his practice is a relentless sketching discipline. Following the ancient Greek painter Apelles’ injunction that not a day should pass without at least tracing a line, Jack is always armed with an A4 sketchbook and seventy pencils sharpened like a prison shiv in his bag, ready to capture portraits and the fleeting gestures of the people around him whether they be strangers on his daily commute on the tram or his friends at work or rest. This has greatly sharpened his eye and quickened his hand over the years, allowing him to tackle his more ambitious works in the studio with greater confidence and sincerity.