Michael O’Malley is a Bushwick-based mixed media artist whose work examines the tension between permanence and impermanence in urban life. A veteran and business school graduate, O’Malley’s creative voice was shaped by a lifetime of movement—through landscapes, systems, and stories. His travels and experiences have cultivated a unique lens through which he observes the world, grounding his art in emotional honesty and street-level immediacy.
Working primarily with found materials, spray paint, acrylics, and markers, O’Malley’s process is one of reclamation and transformation. His work honors the unseen and overlooked, echoing themes of resilience, adaptation, and resistance. Inspired by his environment and informed by the people who’ve marked his journey, O’Malley’s art speaks in bold color and layered texture—a visual chronicle of survival and self-discovery.
Origin: Boston, MA
Currently Exhibiting in: Bushwick, Brooklyn
Instagram: @moart617
Featured Artwork at Bushwick Gallery
Down Broadway
Year of Creation: 2025
Medium: Mixed Media
Dimensions: 49″ x 49″
Price: $1,200
Description:
Down Broadway reimagines an old municipal street sign as a vibrant canvas for introspection and transformation. Painted over with electric layers of neon spray and rhythmic dots, the original lettering—“Broadway Closed to Traffic”—becomes both literal and symbolic. At the center, a wide-eyed blue figure floats in its own orbit, encircled by spiraling lines that hint at internal motion and psychological gravity.
Infused with visual energy and emotional charge, the piece reflects O’Malley’s experience living in Bushwick—a neighborhood in constant flux. The sign’s original purpose, to guide and redirect, becomes a metaphor for navigating change, identity, and place. What was once an object of public utility is now a personal monument to survival, adaptation, and creative reinvention.
Exhibition Information
April 2025: “Urban Narratives: The City as Canvas”
Curated by: Fern Messa Joson
Theme: Turning the cityscape into a canvas, this exhibition captures the raw, vibrant energy of urban life through graffiti, street photography, painting, animation, and more.
Exhibition Dates: April 3 – April 10, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 3 | 6 PM – 8 PM
Guided audio experience
For accessibility, the full video transcript is provided below for those who prefer to read or are unable to listen.
“What you’re looking at was once a simple directive: “Broadway Closed to Traffic.” But in the hands of Michael O’Malley, this salvaged street sign becomes a site of reinvention—both visually and emotionally.
Down Broadway pulses with neon color, spiraling lines, and a wide-eyed blue figure suspended at its center. There’s movement here—internal, psychological. The figure doesn’t walk Broadway; it floats above it, as if navigating a city not by its streets, but by feeling. Around it, layered dots and bold spray strokes evoke the rhythm of a place constantly in flux.
O’Malley is a mixed media artist, a veteran, and a storyteller of urban resilience. His work often begins with found objects—things meant to guide or control—and transforms them into monuments of survival. This piece is no different. The street sign, once a tool of redirection, now speaks to personal detours, identity shifts, and the constant recalibration that defines life in a changing neighborhood like Bushwick.
There’s humor here. Tension. Play. But more than anything, there’s presence. Down Broadway doesn’t erase its past—it reclaims it. The official lettering still lingers beneath the paint, reminding us that every surface in the city carries a layered history. Some written by the system. Some by hand.
Let yourself feel the energy in this piece. The urgency. The reclamation. This isn’t just a work of art—it’s a map of how we move forward when the road closes.”