In the Studio with Kyle O’Malley
I first encountered Kyle O'Malley's paintings in 2024 at the SMFA MFA Thesis Exhibition, Pulling Teeth and Jumping Rope, in Boston. The show featured artwork from many talented graduates, but Kyle's canvases stood out to me immediately.
The color and scale of his paintings command a room. Through airbrushing and masking, Kyle creates the uncanny impression of digital art, yet every inch is made by hand. I left that show eager to see where he would go next. On a recent trip to New York two years later, I visited his studio.
Kyle's latest paintings are figurative, gestural, and bold. What struck me most was the tension between control and release. Hard edges contain loose, expressive marks. You can feel the energy of the hand at work, and sense the deliberate structure underneath it. Gerhard Richter's influence is present in the interplay between photographic reference and abstraction.
Standing in front of his canvases, I was reminded why studio visits matter so much to my practice. There is no substitute for seeing a painting at full scale, in the room where it was made, and hearing the artist speak about it. One of the most fulfilling aspects of being an independent advisor is connecting collectors directly with artists like Kyle, opening the door to conversation, collaboration, and discovery. Knowing the person behind a painting changes how you live with it.
Kyle's paintings hang in private collections across the country. For collectors drawn to post-war abstraction and its contemporary heirs, his work offers something rare: a painter fluent in both art history and the digital present, working at a scale that transforms a space.
His journey is one I've been glad to follow from his thesis show in Boston to his studio in New York. I can't wait to see where his explorations in abstraction lead him next.
Follow Kyle on Instagram @kyle.j.omalley. If you'd like to learn more about Kyle O'Malley's work or acquiring a painting, I'd love to hear from you.
