Title: | Travelers |
Inventory#: | NE000133 |
Size: | 30" x 48" |
Medium: | Oil on Panel |
Price: | $46,500 |
This painting started out with a shaft of light and the better part of a house…
I had been trying my damnedest to bring two elements into this composition which in the real world are hundreds of feet on either side of this little red pump. The old lamp and sign pole, and the old station owner’s house.
Along the way I was listening to “Rules of Civility” by Amor Towles, when a phrase jumped out at me…”over the bar hung four studies of gas stations by Stuart Davis”. So off I go to look up said paintings. Which lead to a refresher course in early 20th century American art and in particular his cubist-ic like paintings of the new elements of modern urban life.
My aim was a bit less wild but referencing the same era as I wanted to bring a corner of the iconic white New England clapboard house in to balance the tall slender light pole and play around with an Edward Hopper-like isolation of the lonely gas pump on an up country road. Standing now as a relic but harkening back to a heyday when it and the cars it fed were shiny new and the light from the top of that pole would beckon wayfaring travelers.
But all the proportions were wrong. It wasn’t a problem to muscle my artistic license around and re-arrange some elements. The problem was the pump. Which is what I really wanted to shine. Think of an overall clad mechanic wiping grease off his hands before lifting the handle to fuel up the Ford, then folding a wing on the top of the pump and leaning in to say hey.
Right, the pump is actually…short…compared to the 20 foot pole and the porch of the house which sits up on that grassy yard behind the stone wall. To get them all in and have the pump large enough so that I could get out the tiny brushes and show you that the price was 49 and 1/10 cents…
well it would have meant an enormously large and dis-proportioned panel. Maybe someday I’ll revisit that. It’s still rambling around and every once in a while, like right now, the Muses kick that ball back onto the playing field.
Instead I went to another era of Art History and pulled my Albrecht Durer books off the shelf to study his “Great Piece of Turf”. A 16th century marvel that has always brought me to my knees. I played loose and free with the positioning of some of that vegetation but all of the passages of jungled vines do live nearby the pump…
and boy did they fight their way into becoming star players in this painting. No blending into the background sea of foliage for those gnarly twisters. They pushed aside that dappled light and danced.
So I whittled the composition down to its essence.
An old red pump
a deep woods county road
a tire rutted turnout
an ancient fieldstone wall
and a traveler.
There are treasures to be found
along every Vineyard road.
Mr. Morse sent me down this one
which was sorta fun.
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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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