Peter O'Neil is a self-taught film photographer whose interests in visual composition and expression have evolved from workshops with Alison Shaw, Susanna Gaunt, Tim Cooper, Elizabeth Stone, Freeman Patterson, and Andre Gallant. Recent influences are from the images and writings of David Ward and Charlie Waite as well as ongoing experience shooting images across the United States.
His work explores how the eye and mind collaborate in "seeing" what the William Blake poetically stated as "the world in a grain of sand." Such ability engages us in exploring, in intimate detail, the extraordinary in the ordinary - the subtle and naturally found abstract beauty of what we commonly and routinely encounter each day but usually pass by without stopping to notice. Consciously, attentively, looking and seeing is charged with such ambiguity, mystery, and fascination at discovering the unseen textures with so many possible interpretations that fixed and stable meanings and labels seldom apply. Our imagination and emotions take over as questions confront us about what it is that our eyes are seeing. Sometimes recalling our experiences, memories, and associations fail to impose meaning or a name for the object. Those moments can be quite powerful in upending our expectations, forcing a complete rethinking of what is before us, and helping to see anew.
“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”
William Blake ~ Auguries of Innocence