Madonna and Child – Crayon on Paper – Campbell Neil – 1965
I’ve probably studied this piece of art more than any other. I was about seven when my parents acquired and placed it in the living room of the home I grew up in. The artist, Campbell Neil, was a family friend and my father’s insurance agent. He had crafted this wonderful modern Madonna and Child using crayons and paper and this was a true wonder to me at the time. After all I had crayons, the stubs of which I carefully kept in an old Maxwell House coffee can, and this moving work of art had been made using crayons just like mine.
So I spent hours upon hours gazing at this art. I often did so with that old coffee can in front of me carefully trying to replicate just some of the beauty contained in this piece. While I didn’t, except on one or two occasions, try to replicate the subject matter I did try my hand blending the colors and began moving away from the technique used by most seven year old children of making a bold outline and then carefully coloring it in.
Looking back now this may have been the first artwork I ever fully appreciated and learned from. The depth and feeling Mr. Neil obtained using his economic lines and subtle shading had a lasting impression on me.
Campbell Neil was a kind and gentle man and these traits come across in his work. I remember when my father died in 1979 Mr. Neil was one of the first people to come to the house. He came not as my dad’s insurance agent, although he was, but he came as friend. His calmness was a welcome relief from the chaos my family was experiencing having just lost our father quite suddenly at the age of 52. We knew he shared our feeling of loss and his presence was a comfort just as the artwork he had so carefully crafted and which was hanging in the living room always had been for me.
Mr. Neil himself passed away a number of years ago but I thought of him last week as I once again studied this amazing work of art. It still hangs in my mother’s living room. It’s now a different house than the one I grew up in and in a different state but having the Madonna and Child hanging there certainly helped make it feel like home.
