Heather Neill

"Camera Obscura", Oil Painting

Heather Neill's (US based) "Last of the Season" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a suspended tomato with the hand of a gardener with glove. A yellow bird is hovering nearby. Artist Autobiography: Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, 1958, my family moved every two years thereafter from California to NJ to PA, and back and forth in-between coming to rest for a while in Swarthmore, PA for the high school years then off to Connecticut College as an art major. The only formal training I have is from my college years, when I focused mainly on black and white, finding refuge in the pencil and printmaking process. I went to Boston after college. Worked in the Harvard Sq. Coop as a picture framer and ended up managing their custom-framing department for most of the 80’s. I left there to move to Muddy Creek Forks, a tiny self-contained village in a remote holler of Pennsylvania where I lived in the abandoned general store (post office, train station and hotel all in one building) and spent the next 5 or 6 years as a traditional chairmaker. Sitting on my shaving horse with my drawknife (using only hand tools) I made Shaker style ladder-back chairs and made the rounds of juried craft shows and museums. I can’t count the number of odd jobs that have put bread on the table since then, but they include farm hand, carpenter, bookbinder, vest maker, stripper at a three woman printing company and picture framer off and on for 25 years. My easel has been set up in every one of the 26 places I have lived so far. As of 2001 I now paint full time and divide my time between my log cabin and adjoining studio along the Little Conewago Creek in Manchester, PA and the open studio of Martha’s Vineyard, MA. By the time I decided to give painting my full time efforts I was well into my early forties. My partner of twenty years is a hospice nurse and living with her has taught me that life is short...

Heather Neill's (US based) "One for Solitude" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a wood paneled rustic interior complete with a checkered...

Heather Neill's (US based) "Tied Up" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a wood paneled rustic fishing boat with all its gear and fittings...

Heather Neill's (US based) "New Easel View" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts an eerie overcast farm landscape, with a decaying tree in front of a collapsed fence, w...

Intimate paintings represented by unmade beds and tossed sheets, absent of any human evidence, on intentionally blank, somewhat rough backgrounds. The empty bed in these paintings represents a place for grief, isolation or healing. As such, the work speaks to our shared feeling of grief, with the understanding that while we all suffer in our individual ways, suffering is universal. Source material for this work are photographs the artist has both taken and found, and the intimate size of the paintings references the intimate nature of the subject matter. The backgrounds of the paintings are repeatedly painted and sanded, to create a frame and backdrop for the bedding that is flat, yet rough with work and time. The bedding itself is seen from different perspectives, but still indicates a scene of desolation and despair. While the series began in the fall of 2016, recent events—including the pandemic—have provided a new dimension to the work and have compelled Serpick to consider the themes in light of these events. Our forced isolation and the challenges it has brought to our physical and mental health provides an additional shared experience from which to consider grief and eventual healing. Biography Stephanie Serpick is a painter whose work explores themes of isolation, grief, and healing. Her work has been shown in various exhibitions in the U.S. and internationally, and she is a fellow at several residencies, most notably at the Florence Trust Studios in London, MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, and the Vermont Studio Center, where she was awarded a full fellowship and stipend to attend. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Sweet Lorraine Gallery in Brooklyn, the College of Southern Nevada, and a two-person exhibition at The Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute at the Museum of Art at Pratt in Utica NY...

Intimate paintings represented by unmade beds and tossed sheets, absent of any human evidence, on intentionally blank, somewhat rough backgrounds. The empty bed in these paintings represents a place for grief, isolation or healing. As such, the work speaks to our shared feeling of grief, with the understanding that while we all suffer in our individual ways, suffering is universal. Source material for this work are photographs the artist has both taken and found, and the intimate size of the paintings references the intimate nature of the subject matter. The backgrounds of the paintings are repeatedly painted and sanded, to create a frame and backdrop for the bedding that is flat, yet rough with work and time. The bedding itself is seen from different perspectives, but still indicates a scene of desolation and despair. While the series began in the fall of 2016, recent events—including the pandemic—have provided a new dimension to the work and have compelled Serpick to consider the themes in light of these events. Our forced isolation and the challenges it has brought to our physical and mental health provides an additional shared experience from which to consider grief and eventual healing. Biography Stephanie Serpick is a painter whose work explores themes of isolation, grief, and healing. Her work has been shown in various exhibitions in the U.S. and internationally, and she is a fellow at several residencies, most notably at the Florence Trust Studios in London, MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, and the Vermont Studio Center, where she was awarded a full fellowship and stipend to attend. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Sweet Lorraine Gallery in Brooklyn, the College of Southern Nevada, and a two-person exhibition at The Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute at the Museum of Art at Pratt in Utica NY...

'Faded' depicts Chinese immigrant woman looking out from the window of her Chinatown home. The building is covered with cascading shadows that are created from the building's metal...

Intimate paintings represented by unmade beds and tossed sheets, absent of any human evidence, on intentionally blank, somewhat rough backgrounds. The empty bed in these paintings represents a place for grief, isolation or healing. As such, the work speaks to our shared feeling of grief, with the understanding that while we all suffer in our individual ways, suffering is universal. Source material for this work are photographs the artist has both taken and found, and the intimate size of the paintings references the intimate nature of the subject matter. The backgrounds of the paintings are repeatedly painted and sanded, to create a frame and backdrop for the bedding that is flat, yet rough with work and time. The bedding itself is seen from different perspectives, but still indicates a scene of desolation and despair. While the series began in the fall of 2016, recent events—including the pandemic—have provided a new dimension to the work and have compelled Serpick to consider the themes in light of these events. Our forced isolation and the challenges it has brought to our physical and mental health provides an additional shared experience from which to consider grief and eventual healing. Biography Stephanie Serpick is a painter whose work explores themes of isolation, grief, and healing. Her work has been shown in various exhibitions in the U.S. and internationally, and she is a fellow at several residencies, most notably at the Florence Trust Studios in London, MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, and the Vermont Studio Center, where she was awarded a full fellowship and stipend to attend. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Sweet Lorraine Gallery in Brooklyn, the College of Southern Nevada, and a two-person exhibition at The Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute at the Museum of Art at Pratt in Utica NY...