Parallels between farming, painting

by Angie Wotton
    A couple of years ago, my husband bought a painting from Littleton artist Frank Sullivan as a surprise for me. It’s a landscape painting of part of my family’s land forever called “the Amnott Farm.” In the painting, late afternoon light falls softly on a field road winding through fields of hay with darkening shadows around the edge of woods that my sister and I planted more than 25 years ago.
    It’s a painting that I never tire of looking at and one that makes me happy with the memories it conjures up. Although the painting speaks to me personally, Frank told me that he really paints for himself. For him, making art is about drawing on his childhood memories and influences. Those memories include vacations at his maternal grandparents’ onion farm in upstate New York and the smells of onion and dirt seemingly ever-present on his grandfather. Memories of growing up in Massachusetts and endless days spent wandering the fields and woods around their small subdivision. Living and exploring the land here in Maine brings those memories and smells and feelings back to him and helps him create. His creations allow the rest of us to look at the land around us in a new and appreciative context.
Littleton artist Frank Sullivan
    But how did Frank, his wife Meryl and their two children end up here? Funny you should ask. Meryl, perusing eBay one day, spontaneously clicked on an eBay real estate pop up ad and a photo of a farmhouse in Littleton pulled up. It looked exactly as Frank imagined his “someday we’ll get out of the rat race and move to the country” house would look. He described the moment by saying, “The train pulls in and you’ve got to get on. Sometimes it’s not about working towards the goal, it’s about grabbing the opportunity.” When they drove up to see the house, Frank said, “It just felt right.” He also noted that while intellectually it made no sense for them to quit their jobs and move to northern Maine, instinctively they knew it was something they had to do.
    Painting the farm buildings and agricultural landcape in the community provides parallels between farming and painting. Farmers and painters, alike, organize their palettes and land into geometric shapes and create within those boundaries, yet both are beholden to much that they can’t control. Weather, mud, length of daylight, pests are part of the seasons and affect each type of work. Both landscape artist and farmer have to know when to give in to intuition and allow themselves to not be in control.
    There are times when Frank is set up on the edge of a field drawing and a farmer drives by on his tractor and he thinks, “I wonder what he thinks of me right now?” To Frank, the similarities are obvious. Both will eventually reap the awards of a harvest that will take a lot of nurturing along the way. Most importantly, both do it because they love it. As Frank told me, “This is where I’m supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”
    Editor’s note: Angie Wotton loves her work as district manager for the Southern Aroostook Soil and Water Conservation District. She also raises pastured pork and vegetables with her husband on their small West Berry Farm in Hammond. She can be reached 532-9407 or via e-mail at angela.wotton@me.nacdnet.net.