Biography

Donna Underwood Owens
VTAnimalWhisperer@verizon.net
(802) 879-4618

In 1952 Donna was given an antique Kodak Brownie 2 camera for her seventh birthday. The little "Brownie 2" was her gateway to a whole new world. There was and is still nothing that can hide from her unique perspective of life around her. When you look at her work, it's like looking into the soul of whatever she has captured on film.

That fall, she spent an entire weekend in a chicken coop trying to catch a chicken laying an egg. Grabbing the egg, she excitedly rushed into the house, tripping on the door stoop, and landing face down on the kitchen floor with egg splattered everywhere. The camera burst open, exposing the film and ruining all the shots.

In the summer of 1959 Donna sold her first framed photograph to a neighbor for three dollars. Her father had shown her how to make a frame out of twigs and branches from an old white birch tree.

As a youngster, she met Aldo Merusi, a photojournalist with the Rutland Herald. Mr. Merusi was encouraging, once saying: "What you see is your creation and yours alone for ever." Later, Donna's junior high school art teacher, Mr. George Galo, inspired her to look deeper into what she was creating in class. His instructions were to let your mind experiment with colors and field of perception. It was those two men, long ago, who helped sow the creative seeds that still blossom in Donna's mind.

Today, Ms. Owens is known throughout Vermont for photos of a wide array of wildlife, taken anywhere from a field to her dining room window. The intimate relationship she has with her subjects and deep appreciation for the animals' intelligence is quite evident in her photographs. The creatures of the forest, she says, are quite comfortable and feel quite safe around her , as they often tend to follow her when she is out hiking. She also offers a revealing glimpse into their lives and behavior as well as their breathtaking beauty. This knowledge, together with her artistic eye and love for nature, has produced photographs that capture nature's beauty and further our understanding of the world around us.

Working and playing with her two Minolta cameras and an old Miranda, she is more content in the woods than ever, often walking many miles in a week to capture that one special shot. Traveling on logging roads and other down trodden paths, she longs to hear the bray of a moose or deer. While sleeping at night under the tall pines or just listening to the wolves and coyotes, the owl hooting for a mate or just the crickets and loons, it is her heaven on earth.