“BLUE BIRTH”: Close-up nature photography by Tasha O’Neill is featured in “From a Child’s Perspective.” The exhibit is at D&R Greenway Land Trust’s Olivia Rainbow Gallery at One Preservation Place in Princeton through February 7. Admission is free.

D&R Greenway Land Trust’s Olivia Rainbow Gallery presents “From a Child’s Perspective,” close-up nature photography by Tasha O’Neill, through February 7. The artist focused macro-lenses on rare minuscule plants and other species, giving D&R Greenway visitors the experience of the late Olivia Kuenne’s own enthusiasms outdoors. Whimsical titles add to the sense of having entered an enchanted forest. The Gallery was founded in this young artist’s memory.

O’Neill discovered some of her subjects on guided walks with Jim Amon (former director of stewardship) on Greenway preserves. Some species were introduced on daylong photo-safaris in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, with Princeton Photography Club fellow members. Others presented themselves to the artist near her summer home, close to Maine’s Acadia National Park. 

O’Neill’s art regularly appears in Princeton-area juried exhibitions. She was given a one-person exhibition of her Forest Bathing art, for D&R Greenway’s recent “Soul of a Tree.” O’Neill was also featured by NJ Audubon in April 2018. Her Golden Light, an apotheosis of winter trees, is a highlight in D&R Greenway’s current “Lovely as a Tree.” Her Gifts from the Sea will appear at Merwick’s Millstone Gallery in Plainsboro from March 10 to May 9. Her Shapes of Water will adorn Princeton’s Nassau Club in November and December. O’Neill’s wreath of Maine seaweeds and mosses was included in the Princeton Magazine Holiday 2018 article featuring creative wreaths by local artists.   

The artist grew up in Schweinfurt, Germany, where her family was dedicated to nature, in the home garden and that region’s diverse countryside. Almost weekly, her mother would take O’Neill and her brother to nearby mountains. “There we would walk; explore; learn about wild plants and berries; and then nap in the meadow. With our faces so close to the flowers, the gentle buzzing of insects would lull us to sleep.”

Of her searches for rarities, O’Neill says, “I seem to be drawn to the unusual. The tiniest plants compel me, as though I were still my child self.  I am pleased that D&R Greenway invited me to share these images from the child’s perspective for Olivia’s Rainbow Gallery.”

The Olivia Rainbow Gallery of D&R Greenway’s Johnson Education Center is located at One Preservation Place, Princeton. Admission is free. For more information, call (609) 924-4646 or visit www.drgreenway.org.