11 Artists Leading the Country's Cultural Conversation Right Now

Today, O’Neal lives and works on a 20-acre property in a quiet corner of the world, Woodruff, S.C., where he continues to create pieces that aim to blur the lines between our perceived and unperceived realities. The creative mind of O’Neal doesn’t lend itself simply to “canvas, goo, repeat”—instead, O’Neal has dreamt up and invented a variety of projects that cross the lines between science, art, perception and time. For example, he is credited with creating “Brain Machine,” a rudimentary EEG cap that he connected with a device similar to that of an Etch A Sketch to create art based on brain waves and eye motion—simultaneously taking out the human stroke entirely and putting the human condition at the center of the work and process.

O’Neal also often creates installations that are kinetic and, on occasion, frenetic. Using his lens-based painting technique, O’Neal strives to reflect the world around us; his stroke is both a truer view and distortion of reality so that we may see more clearly. In the creation of his work, O’Neal captures “real-time” signifiers of this reality and provides us with glimpses into the Universal Gnosis—our inner knowing of that which we cannot consciously articulate. O’Neal has exhibited in galleries and museums across the country and has long-standing relationships with galleries in Los Angeles and Atlanta, having just wrapped an exhibition at Bill Lowe Gallery titled About Now: An Introspective in October. “There is so much we haven’t figured out how to get out of our minds,” says O’Neal. “There is a realm that we have not grasped and have not gleaned. That is what I want to capture in my art.”