“[Lovelace] O’Neal’s evolution has been altogether natural and now, the once recessive, more figurative aspects of her work have asserted themselves. While geometric structures remain, her signature brushwork, at times a storm of abstract markings, have quieted down a bit and coalesced into more representational imagery. Her paintings and drawings retain their exuberant colors, their familiar assertiveness, their mordant sense of the absurd and complex, infectious rhythms, but the materials have changed and the compositions are orchestrated differently. Part of the shift was due to external factors. [Lovelace] O’Neal is no longer able to climb up and down ladders with ease, to stretch to the edges of the canvas, to dance her paintings into existence. In addition, allergic reactions forced her to give up mediums that she has always used, chief among them oil paints, solvents, lampblack and other unbound pigments. In experimenting with new techniques and new, non-toxic materialsphotographic and printing processes, acrylics, children’s paints, wax crayons, colored pencils, charcoals, pastels and more—new ways of thinking about her work and making it have inevitably arisen. She also retired from the University of California Berkeley in 2006, and suddenly had more time to draw, to cut and paste and make templates for the amusing-and questionable-repertory of street and fairy tale characters she was developing for her disingenuous fantasies, her theatrical tales of high life and low life, such as Chagall, Mr. and Mrs. Quackenbush, Mr. Doohickey, KellyTwoTails, Lucita, Miss Suckeye and Pony Pony Hucklebuck. [...]”

“[An original painting of Chagall] led to more Chagalls, including a recent painting, Chagall’s Joy house Goose [sic] (2007), a rich, dark picture enlivened by a character with the same kind of red coxcomb headdress as the drawing, a few dabs of electric green, and a glowing pink goose. Other paintings from 2007 are equally fantastic, such as the exuberant She Thinks She’s a Zebra but She’s Actually a Painted Pony, which stretches two fancy, high-stepping, strutting feminized (or transgendered) figures across the canvas from top to bottom, accompanied by the artist’s new favorite emblem, a plump yellow goose. In He Shaped My Days, the images—a male hipster pursued by a blowsy female figure—have the whiff of either carnival or bordello, as do many of her scenarios and seem to be wearing avian masks with sharp predatory beaks, the painting beguiling in its colors but with a current of uneasiness, of imminent, indeterminate danger. In [Lovelace] O’Neal’s high-flying new projects, metamorphoses, magic and magical thinking are in the air.”

—Lilly Wei, 2007, for "Adventures and Misadventures: The Art of Mary Lovelace O’Neal"