Obituary The beloved artist was best known for monumental canvases and inventive, gestural “lampblack” works. May 14, 2026 — 5 min read Mary Lovelace O'Neal (all images courtesy Jenkins Johnson Gallery New York and San Francisco) Painter, educator, and Civil Rights activist Mary Lovelace O’Neal died on May 10 at age 84 in Mérida, Mexico. Her galleries, Jenkins-Johnson and Marianne Boesky, announced her death yesterday. She is survived by her husband, Chilean-American artist Patricio Moreno Toro, with whom she divided her time between Mérida and Oakland, California.  Lovelace O’Neal’s monumental paintings, which move fluidly between abstraction and figuration, are characterized by large gestural marks and explosive energy. She was perhaps best known for her Lampblack paintings, in which she applied layers of loose black pigment to her canvases and used a chalkboard eraser or her hands to punctuate the surface with thin white or colored lines.…