Title: | Aquinnah Sunset |
Inventory#: | NE000156 |
Size: | 20" x 30" |
Frame Size: | 26" x 36" |
Medium: | Oil on Panel |
Price: | $18,500 |
Anyone who has spent time
on the island of Martha’s Vineyard
will know how dramatically
the quality of light
can change
in the blink of an eye.
Last year,
in what now seems like
emotional light years away,
we extended our annual fall visit
letting the island and our friends there
hold us a little longer
and a little closer
because we needed to be held.
On our last night
when up-island was as quiet as I’ve ever seen it
we sat in the car in Menemsha
saying our goodbyes to the harbor
we alone were there as the heavy clouds
were obscuring any promised sunset.
We decided to make the loop
out to Aquinnah
and as we came upon the lighthouse
and rounded the bend
the winds howled
and the heavens parted
for waves of color to break through.
Looking back…
From where we all are now…
I can seen how powerfully looming a harbinger
the raging…
and then clearing…
of that Nor’easter was.
We thought our world
had shifted something mighty back then…
And then…
the reckoning.
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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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