Ella Gardner completed most of the paintings in her Amish Series in 1988-89. Her interest in the Amish culture grew after she and her husband Russell sold their dairy farm to an Amish family.

About The Amish Series

From A Celebration of Life, by Ella Gardner

In the early eighties, black-hooded buggies began appearing on the roads and highways around Granton (in central Wisconsin) as Old Order Amish families quietly moved into our community. In 1983 we sold our farm to an Amish man and his wife and we had a chance to become acquainted with these God-fearing people who refuse to change with the times. We had bought the place forty years earlier, back in the days of the great depression. From that time until the present the farming methods on the farm have made a complete circle…we started farming with horse power and we had no electricity. When we sold it we had electricity and indoor plumbing plus tractors and modern machinery.

Today the farm is again farmed with horses and the electricity and plumbing have been taken out. They are old fashion, but they survive. They go along at the same pace oblivious to up and down economics. To them the land holds a promise and they are at home in an environment that is constant and rhythmatically continuous.

In the Amish society, religious, family, education, vocations and social activities are cherished and loved. The children grow into adulthood with a deep sense of belonging. This helps them survive as a people in the modern world. They are a fulfilled and contented people and there is a certain gallantry in their refusal to be drawn into the whirl of modern ways; there is beauty in their simplicity as they maintain the tone of a quieter past.