As you move through your day—hurrying from work to the grocery store or out to meet friends—it’s easy to miss the quiet, fleeting moments of beauty around you. The way light slips through a window and glints off a glass, or the brief shimmer of a wave just before it collapses into foam. These are the kinds of subtle, easily overlooked details that artist Jeanne O’Neil seeks to immortalize. “I focus on what people might otherwise miss; what I might miss,” she explains, noting the delicate fall of light on a flower petal or the precise, shifting hues of the tide at a certain moment.

With a lifelong connection to the Cape, and years of memories making day trips to Old Silver Beach or swimming off Bassetts Island, O’Neil finds inspiration in the scenes that filled her childhood. “We used to take weekend trips to Provincetown or Oak Bluffs, where we would wander aimlessly down the side streets,” she reminisces. “The coastal colors, the local architecture—those views all now define my art.” Lately, she’s been drawn to the ocean as seen from a cottage suite at Chatham Bars Inn, where she watched the sun rise over a wintry shoreline just hours before a blizzard set in—a sweeping, blustery scene she’s now intent on capturing.

O’Neil has tried her hand at many different mediums, but ultimately found her niche in acrylics, capturing coastal scenes and cottage gardens in striking realism. Recently, she started creating her paintings digitally, marrying her 25 years of experience in technology consultation with her creative passion. “I love getting to blend my technical skills with my creative side,” she explains, noting that her go-to tools are now a laptop, a tablet, and a stylus. “I can make art anywhere, anytime, and without ever running out of Titanium White,” she jokes. 

“The beauty of painting digitally is that it can be a very forgiving medium,” says O’Neil. “I like to say that I’m simply painting with pixels rather than tubes of paint.” With over 700 brush variants available to her with her painting software, O’Neil has the freedom to experiment with different styles, brushstrokes, and textures. “The best part? If a brushstroke doesn’t feel right, I just hit undo,” she says with a laugh. 

For someone whose artistry is centered on capturing memories—realistic renditions of specific moments—it seems only fitting that she has a piece that feels most memorable to her. “I painted Sunflower Solidarity as a tribute to the Ukrainian people, as my own way to honor their remarkable strength and resilience,” she says. “I remember my dining room transforming, overflowing with dozens of sunflowers and vivid blue hydrangeas. My goal was to capture those striking colors of the Ukrainian flag with a single, powerful composition.” Navigating the “floral chaos,” as she puts it, was a challenge for this piece, but the result was a painting that was equally rewarding to her in its compositional journey as it was in its final form. It would eventually become her first juried entry at the Falmouth Art Center.

The quiet power of O’Neil’s work lies in its sense of sanctuary, the feeling of standing on a Cape Cod shoreline and taking a long, steadying breath. She hopes her paintings offer that same stillness to others. “I hope my art serves as a gentle reminder of why this corner of the world is so special to all of us,” she says. That viewers can find a measure of peace in her work speaks to the emotional depth she brings to each piece. For O’Neil, the artist’s most essential task is simple, “to create the art only you can create.”

Jeanne O’Neil’s work is on display at Hydrangea Gallery & Gifts, 835 Main Street in Osterville, and also available online at her website, jeanneoneil.com.

~Allyson Plessner