“At the moment, I’m working part-time with my cousin on his farm. I do the milking every evening in the summer.

Here, at our own place, I look after our own cattle. We finish cattle and grow spring barley. The contractor comes in for the silage and harvesting and I do the spraying, the slurry and the rest myself.

We sell some barley and feed back the rest to the weanlings.

I always loved farming, I’m good with the animals. I’m the oldest; my sister, Emily, is in Dublin and she comes down with her two boys to help out and my twin sister, Joy, is an occupational therapist in Tramore. Her two sons – Conor, 5, and Myles, 2 – are mad into farming. It’s funny because we are all girls and now, we have all boys.

Green Cert to fine art

After school, I did the Green Cert in Kildalton for two years. I farmed for a bit at home with Dad [Tom Hearne] and then I headed on to do art because I always wanted to do that.

Dad was quite accommodating in that he knew I wanted to pursue art and he gave me the chance to go for it. I did four years in Crawford college as a mature student and graduated in 2009 with a degree in fine art.

At that time, I was painting 5x7ft paintings of bulls and horses. Just the sheer size and power of them, I loved it. One bull in particular, if there was another bull in the field or if you came up near the gate, he used to puff himself out and make himself look as big as he could. He was a Limousin. With him, he was the main guy at the time, he was a really nice-looking bull and he was the boss compared to the other two bulls.

Anna employed old-school techniques for her swallow paintings.

I used to get the dog to move them around the field so I could capture the muscle movement as they turned in the paintings. I would be painting in the yard beyond the gate and I would get the dog to run in after them.

I did that for the end of my degree show.

It’s hard to make a living out of art. You nearly spend as much on doing the piece as you earn from it.

Learning from the masters

When you go to art college, it is more about the concepts and thinking behind the art. After graduating, I went over to England to Nicholas Beer. He does these old-school courses called sight-size. This is how the likes of Caravaggio would have painted; how they learnt in Florence.

We were doing portraits and you are literally working straight from the model. You have the person at a certain space away from you and you would have to walk back from the easel and line it up with rope. Then, it is over and back the whole time between the easel and the model marking what the eyes see.

Anna employed old-school techniques for her swallow paintings

There is a lot more movement in it and the brush strokes can be a lot more dynamic, that’s what sight-size is.

I came back home and got back into the farming. I was always painting and I would go through phases where the farm would be so busy that the painting would have to take a back seat and then I would really want to priortise the painting for a bit.

A gift

Miriam, my wife, suggested I paint a swallow for her mum as she was sick at the time and she didn’t know if she was going to see the swallows again. She loved the return of the swallows every spring. I started looking up the swallows and I didn’t say anything to Miriam. I was wondering how I’d paint them in flight. When I realised just how small they are and the journey they come, I think there is a lot of symbolism behind them. So, I brought in some of the old-school techniques; medieval art and a bit of gold leaf as a nod of admiration that so many have for them.

Anna employed old-school techniques for her swallow paintings

It started off a gift to my mother-in-law and then I ended up being part of an exhibition at the Greenacres in Wexford. It was nice to see them hanging up and to see the reaction from people when they see the swallows. They mean a lot to people, especially you know, when you are out with the cattle and then you spot the first swallow and you say ‘finally, the summer is coming.’

With the long days now, I get the milking finished up early and I tend to go out after tea to start painting. There’s a nice view from the studio across the fields and I can hear the cattle grazing in the field next to me. The dogs let me know if someone comes up the driveway.”

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