Kuerner Farm
Guest blogger Jessica Allen enjoys exploring the fields and forests of Pennsylvania with her artist-husband and their eleven-year-old son.
A Sunday in early fall Jessica Allen attended a Brandywine River Museum of Art's Plein Air Day where artists can spend the entire day roaming one of our historic properties and taking artistic inspiration for their own work. We'd like to thank the author for allowing us to share this beautiful account of her day at Kuerner Farm.
We had the extraordinary privilege of spending the day Sunday...exploring Kuerner Farm. Andrew Wyeth discovered Karl and Anna Kuerner’s farm on one of his boyhood walks. The Kuerners, German immigrants who settled in Chadds Ford after World War I, fascinated the artist. Over time, he developed a complex relationship with the family and the farmscape, aspects of which he explored in many of his best-known works of art.
After a late night seeing a performance by the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra, we woke early Sunday morning and headed for Chadds Ford. Michael baked cinnamon scones, we filled our thermos with coffee and donned long underwear, multiple layers, scarves, gloves and even took our winter coats. It was in the forties when we left around 7:15 am...
First we walked down to the house. Walking up to the back door was like a sort of dream. Moving toward the big white house that grows up out of the earth, and seeing the bell for the first time...it was amazing.
Walking over a fragrant carpet of fallen needles, I half-expected Anna Kuerner to round the bend with her cast iron pot, collecting pine cones to use for kindling.
Inside the back door, to your left, you can look into the woodshed. Although there is now a public restroom inside the back door, most of the house is essentially the same as it is depicted in Wyeth's paintings and drawings.
The wood shed is part of the house, easily accessed from inside. And from the outside, we see its stone exterior and red roof...
As we moved through the first floor, directly to the front porch, we caught glimpses of the kitchen...Anna's wallpaper, the Home Comfort stove..and the Groundhog Day window.
Outside, on the front porch...I cried. I am not embarrassed to admit it. I just feel things a lot more deeply since surviving breast cancer. And so, I cried. To stand on the Kuerner's porch and look across the road to Kuerners Hill...it was truly one of the most emotional experiences of my life.
The front porch feels very intimate. In fact, the whole property feels that way. In Wyeth's paintings the house appears huge, but when you are standing in the grass looking toward the farm pond, or the orchard, or the pasture or barn...it all feels connected and you feel connected to it. The pot hanging from the porch ceiling was a powerful image to see in person. Whether it is original to the house, I don't know...but it sure looks like the pot in which Anna collected her pine cones.
Well, at this point -- after our brief tour of the house -- we were ready to unpack the van. We'd brought painting boxes, easels, supplies, water, drop cloths, and of course...fully stocked camera bags. Michael headed for the orchard. I chose to photograph the mushrooms growing under the pines outside the back door. Soon, Benjamin and I joined Michael along the treeline. Michael was already painting at his easel.
Benjamin and I explored the property around the house, the orchard and the farm pond. Every inch of the property evokes remembrances of Wyeth's work. Honestly, it is incredibly intimidating to try to capture images -- even photographs -- of the Kuerner property without comparing your own composition to that of Wyeth. I would photograph a blade of grass or a corner of the house and think, Andrew painted that far more brilliantly. He was able to reproduce colors and textures that my beloved digital camera simply cannot -- I don't think any machine could reproduce those images because it cannot experience the place, it can only copy it.
After a bit, we returned to where Michael had been painting. He was ready to move further down the hill, toward the house. Benjamin was ready to paint at that point, so Michael prepared an area for him beneath a wonderful old apple tree. As they set up, I wandered back to the van to refill my coffee and fetch Benjamin some drinking water and some scones. We had elevensies and then Michael moved down the hill toward the house.
I left Benjamin alone on the hill, sitting beneath an apple tree, painting. He looked so content. And so happy. Again, I was overcome with emotion. Never in his ten years have I walked away from him that he did not appear apprehensive toward the idea -- we are very much attached. But as I walked away with my cameras, I glanced back and saw he was at ease painting.
I played alone, and wandered a great deal over the hills, painting watercolors that literally exploded, slapdash over my pages, and drew in pencil or pen and ink in a wild and undisciplined manner.
-Andrew Wyeth
After leaving Benjamin in the Kuerner's orchard, I wandered through the opening in the fence and walked down the hill toward the big, red barn. Chicory dots the hillside and I follow deer paths away from my sweet boy and toward the driveway. There I found a few straggly strands of milkweed still standing. And upon closer inspection, a wonderful collection of milkweed bugs gathered on a trampled clump of nearly black stalks.
Few places remain where one may experience the kind of peace Kuerner Farm provides. The unpolluted sky overhead, the thick green grass beneath our feet, beauty in abundance. It was magical, to say the least. I am so grateful we could share it with Benjamin!
This post has been edited slightly from its original version for length. Photos courtesy of Jessica Allen.
Jessica Allen writes at Cattails & Cobwebs, sharing words and photographs celebrating the everyday magic and beauty she sees in her world. Visit her there: http://www.cattailsandcobwebs.com.