Nancy Noel has made quite a name for herself as an artist. Her artwork has taken her all around the world. She is also a lover of animals and one in particular has captured her fancy as of late.
Is there a better way to pass these cold winter days than relaxing by a crackling fire? It doesn't take long to come to the realization that this is a dog's life, but apparently, it's not a bad for a llama, either.
"She has been living in this house since she was five days old, so she really doesn't know anything else," Nancy Noel says.
She was born and then abandoned by her mother about eight months ago. Nancy Noel couldn't or wouldn't stand by and let nature take its course. Thirty years of raising llamas told her she had to act.
"She would have absolutely died. She would have absolutely died. You gotta treat her just like a baby," Noel continues.
"Luna," as Noel has named her, knows her way around the house. Especially the kitchen. Experts at Purdue told her she needed to bottle feed Luna to keep her alive when she was just days old.
"She won't drink the milk if it's not the exactly the right temperature," Noel reveals.
So is it any surprise that Nancy Noel would capture this on canvas?
"This painting clearly has to do with my experience with Luna," she said.
Noel calls the painting "Be Still." She has other poignant paintings at The Sanctuary in Zionsville, like "Interfering With Time" and "Letting Go." The Sanctuary is currently up for sale. Noel is currently exploring relocating to galleries in New York City and Aspen, but she has every intention of staying on the farm and painting in Zionsville - a place she describes as a perpetual vacation.
"I dreamed about riding my white horse up to my house bareback, pulling off the halter, culling my horse and walking into the house and that is exactly what I have created," Noel adds.
Dyslexia painted her into a corner as a child, so she painted her way out.
"My paintings are usually a response to something going on in my life and this painting you can see clearly why I painted it. She is an unbelievable joy," Noel says as she feeds Luna with a bottle of warm milk.
While she doesn't recommend anyone go out and get a llama for the home, she says Luna is 100 percent housebroken and, in many ways, easier to train than her dogs. Perhaps the biggest surprise has been the relation forged between Luna and Degas. It is not at all unusual to see the two curled up in front of the fire. The inscription above them reads, "I come here often to find myself. It is so easy to get lost in the world."
"Yeah, this is how I walk to work," Noel says as we walk from her farmhouse to her studio on the 40-acre property.
The stroll is a short one, but her keen artist's eye can still be a distraction.
"There is a painting everywhere. Hitting the llama's eyes. Hitting the roosters. Coming through the windows. There is just a painting everywhere," she says with wonder in her voice.
It's kind of interesting that the girl who grew up dreaming about all of this, I say to her was we take in the vast property from the pasture.
"You just have to dream," she tells me.
It's picture perfect.
