Tuesday, November 3, 2026
“Big Beats, Little Bar“was done at Little Bar Restaurant in Goodland. There is a hint of the organ pipe wall and Tara is standing over the drum set really impressed by the bright metallic cymbals and the round white drum tops.
“Live at the Funky Biscuit.”
Tara O’Neill’s “Angel Marie.”
Artist Tara O’Neill with her solo exhibit –“Music to my Eyes” at the Marco Art Center La Petite Galeria through February 25th.
“Charlie in Pink” Charlie Pace is a young musician from Everglades City.She is a very bright colorful person when performing and it is all her own music. She uses very bright colorful lighting; Bob Brown is the base player.
“The Nashville Line.” Tim McGeary, Brent Moyer, JRobert; John Burgess, and Capn Jacdoing a lineup backstage atMarGood Park.Each is taking turns leading with a song while everybody had to scramble to jam along. Very impromptu and exciting.
Guests view “Music to My Eyes - A Solo Exhibition by Tara O’Neill.” The exhibit is nowthrough February 25th at the La Petite Galeria, Marco Island Center for the Arts.
Marco Island Center for the Arts presents “Music To My Eyes,” a captivating solo exhibition by award-winning artist and Art Center Instructor Tara O’Neill. This exhibition will run from February 3 through February 25, 2025, in the La Petite Galerie, with an opening reception on February 11 at 5:30 PM.
According to O’Neill, she would like to “recognize the names of various musicians and composers and her images are dedicated to the music makers that brought “Music to My Eyes” to public view: JRobert, Marie Nofsinger, Charlie Pace, El Garo, Tim McGeary, Brent Moyer, Jimmy Buffett, Capn Jac, Maureen Wheeler, John McKuen, Restless Saints, Jack and Elizabeth, John Burgess, Austin Church and Bob Brown. And to those whose names I never caught and to every music maker through time, keeping alive one of our oldest languages.”
“It was a little bar, actually, The Little Bar in Goodland, Florida,” said O’Neill when asked how it all started. “It was my habit, some decades ago, to use musicians for flash drawings. They were the perfect models: well-lit, didn’t move around a lot, and free! Those three to five minute studies were as much about how the music made me feel as what I saw. Most of those drawings ended up in tip jars along with a couple of greenbacks.”
“Fast forward to about six years ago,” O’Neill continued,“ And this practice morphed into one to two hour flash paintings at intimate performances headlined by that star of stage and screen (and my dear friend) JRobert, a.k.a. the Florida Fiddler. Concerts were held monthly at the MarGood sound stage, which is also in Goodland. I painted sounds while sitting in the dark.”
The next transition came in 2022, “the year after I lost my best friend and husband, George Vellis. I was feeling immaculately uninspired, which was understandable, but not good for a working artist,” said O’Neill. “Enter my fine friend and extremely versatile artist, Judi Chinski. Judy invited me for ‘paint dates’ in her well-appointed home studio – these were wonderful healing session, a way of stepping out of my own skin and into the liberating world of intuitive and expressive abstraction. Also, we listened to a lot of music.”
O’Neill said that “years upon years of assorted experiences folded into themselves to produce a body of work in this collection – and maybe tap your toes a little.”
Come for an opening reception on February 11 at 5:30 PM to meet the Tara O’Neill, enjoy the stunning array of artwork and experience the symphony of color and emotion that defines her latest work.
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