Jean O'Brien at her easel.

Jean O’Brien was born in 1946 and spent her childhood years in Guilford, CT., a small town on the shores of Long Island Sound. After a high school education at a private girl’s school in New Haven, CT., she attended Dean Jr. College in Franklin MA, majoring in art. After one year, she transferred to the commercial art program at The Paier School of Art in New Haven, CT.  Ken Davies, Paul Lipp, Rudolph Zallinger, and Deane Keller were among the teachers that taught and inspired her. “I was disappointed with studying commercial art and left Paier after 2 ½ years. All I really wanted to do was paintings. Instead of remaining at school and changing my major, I decided to move to New York to be with my future husband. We were married one year later.”

Soon afterwards she and her husband moved to Woodbury, CT and purchased a 150-year-old house. Maintaining and restoring the antique saltbox was challenging but well worth the effort, as many corners of the house later served as backgrounds for her paintings. For the next 20 years she was busy raising two daughters, working for the local newspaper as a production artist, and starting a hand screened gift wrap paper business with her husband. She abandoned her idea of a business when the selling and promoting became too time consuming.

In 1997 she decided to start painting again. “I set up several objects on an old chest and began to paint, just to see if I could still do it. When that was finished, I started another one.” After submitting the two paintings in a local juried art show, she received first place in the oil category. Then after more paintings were finished, she submitted slides to The American Artist Magazine for their art competition in 1999, and was a finalist in the still life category.

It was around this time that she became interested in the egg tempera medium and decided to experiment with it. “I love to work with it, it dries instantly and you can go over it immediately, making it easier to do textures. And the fact that you can see each layer of paint, gives the painting a special character. Smooth textures are more easily achieved with oils, the dark values are darker and the painting can be varnished to a hard shiny surface. Egg tempera paintings dry to almost a matte surface, although they can be carefully buffed to a slight sheen”.