Title: | The Flock, Tréad |
Inventory#: | NE000134 |
Size: | 48" x 92" |
Frame Size: | 51" x 96" |
Medium: | Oil on Panel |
Price: | $185,000 |
I owe everything Vineyard to my friend Lynn.
She brought me here for the first time.
We would throw a box of spaghetti and some brownie mix
into her car and drive from our shared apartment in Somerville
out to the ferry and over to her beloved island.
It was ten years or more before I even knew there were towns
other than Chilmark.
We drove straight from boat to bluff
and left only briefly for the annual lobster from Larsen’s
…and regular visits to Chilmark Chocolate.
Lynn had the biggest heart I’ve ever known
and its core and depths were chiseled out of those cliffs.
Her honest and joyful humor was wedged in between
every one of the giant stones she tended along her wall.
Her kindness and overflowing generosity
live on in her daffodils that now soak up the spring sunshine.
Her friendship and her family have given me
the closest thing to a home that I have ever known.
The monarch is for her.
Actually it may BE her.
For me
they always will be.
On the day I captured this light
there was a very short window
of this calm after the storm
just enough time
for the sheep to make their way
across the field to where I stood
and as the sun began to set
she flew behind me
and landed on this bend of grass
and stayed until I turned around.
Her smile was exactly as I remembered it
with that laughter and love
come to share the moment
which I had been searching for…
all those years…
as we had made a ritual of stopping
at this turnout each time we left her camp
to see if the sheep were there
and the muses might be too.
After four decades …
and with a wink and a nod
from one happy dancing angel
they did.
Thank you dear sweet soul.
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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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