Imagine a bantering world of soft and fragile landscapes, rich night sky filled with delicate flowers in place of stars. Floating gently beside an enchanting golden moon. The evening breeze lifts a little higher and you drift away only to find another of Obie’s whimsical paintings setting a second wondrous scene for you to play in.

Mark ‘Obie’ O’Brien is a self taught artist working from his lounge-room, he describes his work as ‘naive art’. Born in Bendigo, Victoria Obie moved to Tasmania 20 years ago and currently lives in West Ridgley with his girlfriend Lynne and heirs two amiable dogs Titan and Nora.

Obie’s art captures the essence of yearning, and the delicacies of dreaming, leaving us to ponder upon his intimate visions of life and some of it’s most precious elements; the moon, the sky, the stars and flora.
His work conveys a playful alteration of our reality, appealing to both to children and adults alike, the works aesthetic qualities are drawing additional buyers from around the state as well as on the mainland.

Obie’s mystical paintings are created using a range of different mediums including oil paint, enamel (household) paint, spray paint, ink and small samples from his garden giving his landscapes a pleasantly textured effect.
With an open mind and an on-going fascination for experimentation Obie is continually finding natural ways to acculturate and improve his paintings.

Placing his works in the sunlight produces a crackling effect for his moons, an accidental discovery that he now uses regularly. Although recognising that not everything is successful, “sometimes I try things and it doesn’t work, so I just stop”, his attitude is definitely encouraging. Obie brings simplicity to the pleasures of making art, “I do it to please myself, and if people like it it’s a bonus”.

His passions are on display throughout his home, one that is quite evident was is love for music. Small shelves filled with hundreds of CD’s sit close by his working space. Music playing a very important role in Obie Art, sparking creative feelings and motivation, “I get the titles for a lot of my works from the lyrics an my music”.

Acknowledging that, “Instead of mowing the lawns and doing that sort of stuff I’m always doing something creative....painting,” Obie reflects on the spare time he has while he isn’t working at Umina park, the old aged home located in Burnie. He loves his job and the elderly people he cares for. Obie’s earliest recollection of an art work was as a young child reading the encyclopedia, “I was flipping through an encyclopedia and came across a picture of a Viking, who was in the middle of a race,” he appears delighted to remember, “he cuts off his arm and threw it across the finishing line. I’m not sure who painted it or what it was doing in there,” he adds.
Certainly with recollections like this it is easy to see exactly where Obie’s charisma comes from.
If I make a blob I can turn it into a flower,” Obie ponders the less serious side of his work. Dabbling with the hairstyles of one of his tiny figures, he often becomes so enthralled in the pleasure of the task he doesn’t know when to stop.

Every now and then Obie steps back from his painting, briefly performing a jig on the spot, “I really like this one,” studying his work from afar, “I feel happy”. And so he should. As an artist his style has grown and developed, the figures in his work, once simplistic stick men are now charismatic girls in motion, Obie has transformed his landscapes broadening his use of colours and mediums. His work is becoming more and more renowned whilst Obie’s attitudes towards his art remain the same. “Hopefully in twenty years time I will still be creating and painting, more than I am now.” Obie is heading straight for the stars, and if we’re lucky he just might come back again.