Regan O’Neill’s dynamic and colourful artwork is just like her, writes Denise Carter

Cairns artist Regan O’Neill has 18 years experience in the art industry, so you may imagine she would at least be in her mid to late 40s, but not so.

She sold her first artwork at 17 and is now just 35.

“I went on a boat cruise and had painted salad servers and a woman from a gallery at Cairns Central asked if I could do more,” Regan says.

“I kept putting work into the gallery and it kept selling.”

Then, it was salad servers, now it’s doilies she has an obsession with. Yep, the type your grandma used to make. Actually, pretty much any doily really.

“I’m in love with doilies,” Regan says enthusiastically.

“I went to Byron Bay and was three weeks away and bought 50 doilies.”

“I stick them onto everything, onto canvas.”

“If I’m in a cafe or a restaurant, I’ll take a doily.”

Bright and bubbly, Regan says her work reflects her personality and it does, infused as it is with bright and powerful colours.

“I’m a vibrant happy person and it shows in my work,” she states on her website.

Regan describes her work as “not abstract and kinda modern” and says it represents things like birds or wine glasses, but not depicted in a realistic way.

The landscape and environment she was born into often inspire her work.

“I really love Port Douglas, so going up there gives me a refresher,” she says.

“I love the Tableland too.”

“I go on a day trip every three or four months and pretend I’m a tourist.”

“It is a boost and an inspiration.”

She has painted nudes, which started as part of her diploma of visual arts course at TAFE and ended with a night course in life sketching.

At first, she concedes, it did seem a bit weird.

“But then you just want to see a naked woman so you can paint them – the more bumps the better,” she says, laughing.
Regan is what you might call a prolific painter even though she is not a full-time artist.

She works as a draftsperson (that’s like an architect who “stays under five stories”) at Cairns Regional Council, but she does paint at every opportunity she gets.

“I paint most nights,” she says. “I think, ‘I’ve got to get home and paint’.”

And she usually has five or six pieces of work in progress at any one time.

“While one is drying I’ll work a bit on another,” she says.

During the day, inspiration can come from anywhere: a doll’s head in a shop, an illustration in a magazine, the people she meets, photographs she sees.

Her artist’s eye is always wide open.

But there did come a time when she just doesn’t want to paint at all.

“After my last solo exhibition three years ago, I didn’t paint for eight months,” she says.

“I didn’t know what was going on or why.”

“Any time I tried, what came out was this dark green khaki mush,” she says, making a face of disgust.

“Then I went on holiday to New South Wales.”

“You have to be in the mood.”

Regan also notices a difference since she broke up with her boyfriend.

“I’m loving life.”

“I’m single now so it’s great but when I broke up with my boyfriend, I could see when we were breaking up, I was just throwing paint on there,” she says, laughing.

Regan works in acrylic paints because she loves the colours and the fact they dry quickly but she has tried her hand at most types of art, from photography to screenprinting.

She says she is in a “bit of a bird phase” now but you know that phase will evolve just like she changes where she thinks she might move to in the not-too-distant future.

“I always think I’m going to be in Mexico or Byron Bay and I’m thinking of moving to Bangalow (in NSW), because it’s really arty.”

Her work seems similarly random.

For her upcoming solo exhibition at Buddha Bar, which she will curate, she has no theme.

Rather, the exhibition will comprise of the wide variety of work she has created over the past three years and about 50 she has painted recently.

But don’t be deceived by her seemingly laid-back nature.

Regan is a talented artist with many achievements. She has won the Queensland Premier’s Award and recently came first at the Cairns Show Exhibition for a mixed-media piece.

She also has big plans for the future.

“I’m making goals,” she says.

“In a year, I want to have an online store and have my artwork on greeting cards,” she says.

In the meantime, Regan likes to inspire others with her work.

She has taught junior art for Cairns Arts Society, worked with children at Trinity Beach primary school, and she occasionally displays her work on a Cairns Regional Council bulletin board for staff to buy or simply to enjoy.

“Sometimes people will tell me I have inspired them to paint and I think it’s nice to think that you’re helping someone,” she says.

Regan, who has been co-director of the Cell Art Space in Lake Street and has been on the committee for Cairns Arts Society, also attends many exhibitions and art openings to support the region’s artists.

Hard to imagine with the range and sheer volume of work Regan paints that she has the energy to have a favourite, but her expression becomes a bit glum when she tells me she has and it has already been sold.

“I sold it to a flatmate’s old boss … how random. It was of a stripy couch, it was my favourite painting of real life,” she says.

Buddha Bar, where she will hold her exhibition, is not the easiest of spaces to decorate, with no white walls and little light, but it’s not the first or the last time she will use a space other than a gallery to show her work.

“I have done exhibitions in hair salons,” Regan says, laughing.

For this exhibition, some of her work will be displayed on easels but there will be no particular similarities in her pieces as her art evolves too quickly.

“It’s like if you look at two pieces, you would think they were created by another person.”

>> Regan O’Neill’s solo exhibition for one night only will be on Friday, September 30 at Buddha Bar, 59 The Esplanade
 (entry via Shield St) from 6-9pm. To find out more about Regan and her work, visit www.reganoneill.com 

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