Kennebunkport resident

Heather Hill serves up more than breakfast or lunch these days at All Day Breakfast. She also paints wonderful, familiar scenes and snippets of local life here in Kennebunk. Her artwork decorates the windows and walls of the popular spot, producing an eclectic array of mediums and subjects. She paints portraits of events classic to each season: winter snowmen, spring flowers, fall leaves and summer beaches.

On a recent visit for a good meal to hold us over for our long drive back to New York, we were served not only the food, but food for thought. A special painting of Heather’s caught my eye as I was eating. Its colors drew me in first, but it was its subjects who aroused my curiosity. What were they doing? Where were they? Who were they?

I went up closer to find out. Now I took in how talented the artist was. The people were very real, as was whatever they were discussing. You could see it in their faces. It seemed to be something of importance and meaning. All the subjects were men, young adults and young at heart. They were gathered together in a setting familiar to them, a barn, each in working man’s cap and clothes.

One young man, of to the side and initially overlooked,  sitting atop a bale of hay, in a different type of work clothes - an Army uniform, camouflage fatigues,  becomes the focus.

Now I got a better idea of what they must have been discussing – a soldier’s story. As it turned out, most of the men were former soldiers and all were connected in some way to this young man in his country’s uniform. It turns out that each subject of this portrait had been hand picked for this painted story, each one representing a special notion of America in the artist’s mind, and each one connected in a unique way to the soldier.

One was his father, at his back, a Vietnam veteran was facing him, and flanking him, two World War II veterans, one a Navy man who served on a submarine and another who served under Gen. George Patton. Looking and listening was a young man, sitting on the fence, getting an education. They all knew the young soldier who was leaving the next day for his third tour of duty in the Middle East.

The soldier is a farm boy; his dad manages a local farm that raises Belted Galloways. People stop to take pictures of these large steer as they drive by. The cows graze in the farm’s wide open fields. You have to notice them because they are black with a wide cream band around their middle. He must know these cows and the reddish feathered chickens too, pecking outside their coop next to the barn. This is the setting of the painting.

That comforting familiarity is a far cry from the far off land he came to know, the soil not fertile farmland, but an arid abyss of sun and sand. The land the soldier comes from produces sustenance for its people. The land he is going to produces strife and cruelty for its people. Yet he is going.

What has he brought there of himself and what has he brought home with him? His barn comrades must know some of what he knows and has experienced. They must have lots to talk about in that barn. But what of the young boy on the fence? What will he learn? What will be his story?

Hopefully, not another soldier’s story.