Title: | Milking Iron |
Inventory#: | NE000055 |
Size: | 24" x 30" |
Frame Size: | 30" x 36" |
Medium: | Oil on Panel |
Price: | $24,000 |
The complete backstory for the Kuerner Farm Series can be read on my blog post for July, 18, 2017 …
which you can search for by clicking here.
Now, stay with me in that spring room.
And remember the gift of that raking light,
and turn around.
This is your next treasure.
It is here that I need to mention that I returned to the farm, on another of their plein air days,
on a cloudy close weather day in May.
I had captured this light back in October,
but I was unsure of just exactly what that hanging metal contraption might have been used for.
It had just the teensiest sinister edge about it’s countenance.
By that time I was already 6 months into the body of work that was becoming the Kuerner Farm series,
and I had a list of questions to ask of the docent upon my return.
First one… whatever was that used for.
I had the good fortune to be spending the day with Melody, forgive my not having written down her last name please,
who shared a wealth of details and background on everything from the rich family history
to the architectural foibles and the names of the cats who own the place.
But question one, well it stumped her.
Another good fortune, was that later in the day, Karl the third showed up.
He is an accomplished artist in his own right, who runs workshops on the farm,
and has carried forward a commitment, in conjunction with the Conservancy,
to open the land up to other artists, allowing the creative inspirations to be accessible to future generations.
So Karl had come to drop off some donated cat food.
And he knew exactly what that iron was for.
His grandfather raised milk cows.
The rig hanging in that room was attached at the top to a long iron carrying beam,
which would have allowed the workers to sling a big old milking pail
from the stalls directly across the barn, over to the cooling spring.
Not so sinister after all.
I fell completely in love with it at that point,
and though the light on that day in May never reached the dramatic levels of October,
the second visit gave me a chance to dig deeper, and to see the composition through new filters.
The cobalt blue…
it still makes me swoon.
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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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