Amy O’Neill: Artist in Residence in the Milwaukee River Greenway
July 8, 2026 | Topics: featured artist
The Natural Realm presents Amy O’Neill, who is among 12 artists participating in a year-long residency program called ARTservancy, now in its seventh year. ARTservancy is a collaboration between Gallery 224 in Port Washington and the Restoring Lands Land Trust, Milwaukee Area Land Conservancy, Tall Pines Conservancy, and Lake Michigan Bird Observatory. The mission of ARTservancy is to promote the visionary work of both the artists and conservationists. Each artist has selected a preserve to spend time in and to engage with.
Reflections from the Artist
My plan for the work made during this ARTservancy residency is to use the landscape of the Milwaukee River Greenway to investigate the balance of community and isolation found at the intersection of urban and rural space. I’m also using this as an opportunity to make some structural changes to my physical and mental approach to painting. With this residency, I’m not relying on previous methods of problem solving, so I don’t know exactly what these paintings are about. I’m letting my walks along the river guide my decisions. The river will tell me when the river is ready.
In my landscape paintings, urban structures often take center stage, and the natural landscape is used as a support structure. Nature provides context to the urban spaces. But I don’t know if that is satisfying my curiosity adequately. I like trying to figure out how things work. I think in metaphors, and I learn through them, too. The limitations of the medium of painting act as a fixed metric, the visual metaphor where I can figure out how things work. While I want to figure out how things work, I’m not looking to solve anything. I just want to learn. I want to go to the woods and see what I can see, locate patterns, understand its structures. What metaphors can be gleaned from an unmanicured, liminal space? What elements harmonize in concert with one another, and where are the friction points that produce dissonant chords? How does the land nurture its citizens, and how do the citizens support their lands?
This residency is coming at an opportunistic time for me. In my studio, I’ve been working on revising my approach to painting. I tend to produce tightened, sharp pictures. And while that satisfies the ways I naturally problem solve, it doesn’t align with what I aim to visually produce. My drawings get close to satisfying my hand and my eye because it’s easier to get to this place in a drawing, but it’s trickier to navigate in painting. Using the Milwaukee River Greenway as a site of exploration seems like an earnest and true way to explore how better to align my painting practice to my drawing practice.
Gallery
Bio
My work investigates the balance between community and isolation, and what happens at the points of intersection of those two spaces. Sometimes it’s a cause for celebration, and other times it’s a harbinger of things to come. So much happens in the collaborative effort to build and maintain shared commonalities. My work explores and celebrates the site of these unexpected connections. My paintings explore the literal and metaphorical structures that are built to unite and/or divide us. What are we not supposed to look at? Who is left out of the conversation? What isn’t counted? Structures that support, improve, or divide specific communities are of interest to me. Aspects of time, order, chaos, balance, and magic are present in my paintings.
I received my BFA in Visual Art in 1998 and my MFA in Painting in 2004 from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I am an instructor at UWM in Painting + Drawing and First Year Programs, a current member of the Milwaukee Arts Board, and one of the ARTServancy residents for 2026.
For more information about the Milwaukee River Greenway go to our Find-a-Park page.
Numerous related stories about the Greenway and the many ARTservancy artists in residence there can also be found on the Greenway page.
This residency is sponsored by Restoring Lands. Additional ARTservancy artists in residence at other sites can be found here.
This is the latest in our series of featured artists, which is intended to showcase the work of photographers, artists, writers and other creative individuals in our community whose subjects or themes relate in some broad sense to nature, urban nature, people in nature, etc. To see a list of previously featured artists, click here. The work of the 2022-2023 ARTservancy artists in residence is currently being exhibited monthly at Gallery 224. To meet the other ARTservancy artists in residence, click here and then use the drop-down menu.
All images courtesy of the artist, except as noted. The featured photo at the top of Amy O’Neill in the Greenway is by Eddee Daniel. Restoring Lands is a project partner of A Wealth of Nature.
The Natural Realm blog is part of A Wealth of Nature, which is a project of Preserve Our Parks.
About Preserve Our Parks
Preserve Our Parks, Inc. is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of parks and green spaces. Our mission: To advocate for and promote Milwaukee area parks and open spaces and to strive to protect the tenets of Wisconsin’s Public Trust Doctrine.
For more than 25 years, we have been a leader in advocating for the protection of Milwaukee County park lands, halting many proposals to develop, privatize, or sell local parkland and lakefront spaces. More information about POP, including past accomplishments, is available at www.preserveourparks.org.