Title: | James Pond |
Inventory#: | NEILLH100243 |
Size: | 48" x 92" |
Medium: | Oil on Panel |
Price: | $78,000 |
There is a deceptively simple peace that comes from looking out over this pond.
Peaceful in that air and land and wind and water come together seamlessly
and you can melt away the burdens of the world in one rustling of a leaf.
Deceptive in that there is so much going on in those elements
that your calmly gazing self might be the only still thing around.
All manner of wildlife around you are in constant motion.
The water never stops.
The leaves and clouds dance around you like fairies.
And the chorus of birds and bugs and lapping waves are gentle background to it all.
But my favorite part of this corner of the planet is that it changes.
I have spent many weeks here and no two reference photos are the same.
It was part of the challenge in choosing to paint this spot.
Which season? Which sky? Which time of day?
The blue of that water can be fifty different hues in one given hour.
The constantly revolving collection of cormorants on that single rock alone can make one’s brushes spin.
To settle on all those choices is to make everything…come to a …stop.
And then, once stopped, to try and give each element
an accurate rendering and slowly build the layers of background
melting into middle distance and finally detailed foreground
and tease each strand together and hope that they vibrate as a whole
and at least give the hint that all is in motion.
For the Morse Family
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Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1958, Heather Neill moved frequently as a child, from California to the East Coast and back again. She majored in art at Connecticut College before landing first in Boston, MA, where she worked as a picture framer, and later remote Muddy Creek Forks, Pennsylvania. It was there she developed traditional woodworking skills and trained as a chair maker, using hand tools to fashion Shaker style ladder-back chairs.
During a lifetime of exploring art, Heather’s only formal training came during her college years. With her easel set up in each of the 26 places she’s lived, Heather continued to paint while working various odd jobs, including farm hand, bookbinder, vest maker, and stripper at a three woman printing company.
Heather’s work, rich in texture and detail, features equal parts still life, interiors and landscapes. Preferring to work from life, she collects items everywhere from antique shops and yard sales...to the woods behind her studio and brings them home to paint. From tea cups to doctor’s bags to firefighting helmets, the common threads are the stories that the objects, rooms or spaces in the paintings have to tell.
Painting full time since 2001, Heather now divides her time between Pennsylvania and Martha’s Vineyard, with her wife Pat, a hospice nurse, from whom she has learned that “life is short and far too precious to be doing something less than meaningful work.”
Check Out Heather's You Tube Channel for Painter's Notes and Artist's musings.
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