Helen O’Toole was born and raised in Ireland and now lives and works in Seattle, USA. She is best known for her large-scale abstract oil paintings. She moved to the United States in 1986 to escape endemic unemployment and adventure. O’Toole is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2016), a Contemporary Northwest Art Award (2016), a Pollock Krasner Award (2013), the Jack and Grace Pruzan Fellowship (2009-2015), and the Wycoff Milliman Endowed Fund, and other awards. She completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, (1989) and spent the summer of 1989 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine. She has participated in residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Ireland (1992), The Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA (1991-1992), and The Bemis Foundation, Omaha, NE (1993). Her work is in the Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, and other public and private collections. O’Toole is currently the Floyd & Delores Jones Endowed Chair in the Arts and Chair of the Division of Art at the University of Washington.