Having lived in urban, desert, rural, and coastal landscapes over the years, she's become attuned to the emotional imprint that lived experience leaves on a person. Her paintings draw equally from remembered and observed landscapes, holding onto both a place's physical character and the feeling it leaves behind long after she's left it. Working in acrylic paint, collage, and original photography, O'Connor moves fluidly between painting on location and abstraction, allowing each approach to inform the other. Her compositions favor atmosphere and suggestion over precise detail, creating space for viewers to bring their own memories and associations to each piece. O'Connor studied at Moore College of Art and earned a Bachelor of Science in Interior Design from Drexel University. She continues to paint and exhibit from her seaside studio in Pacific Grove.

Gallery Statement

Landscape | Dreamscape explores the places that continue to stay with me, even now. Across a life spent in very different settings, I've come to understand landscape as something carried inward—a quiet record of where we've been and who we became there. The Landscape paintings begin on location, where working directly from a place lets me respond to its light, mood, and presence in the moment. The Dreamscape series grows from these experiences, blending acrylic paint, collage, and original photography to allow memory and imagination to reshape what was once observed. These aren't meant as portraits of specific places, but as impressions of what a place feels like once it settles into memory. I hope viewers find in them an echo of their own remembered landscapes—the ones that continue to linger, long after leaving.