O’Reilly’s collages and photomontages employ a range of conceptual and formal techniques, resulting in highly refined arrangements of visual information into singular homogenous scenes. John’s primary source material is harvesting snippets from Renaissance and Baroque era paintings, often interwoven with cuttings from male pornographic periodicals.

John O’Reilly was born in Orange, New Jersey in 1930.  He received his B.F.A. from Syracuse University and an M.F.A. from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago. O’Reilly has lived most of his life in Massachusetts hermetically developing his visual language, sharing his work largely with close friends. His momentous public discovery came when his work was included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial at age 65.

His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Art Boston and the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover. To this day at 86 years of age John continues to collage and exhibit his work across the country.