Keeping an Eye Out For Beauty Antioch Artist Creates in Many Media June 2006

by Darlene Jarman
Photos by Russell Byrne

I was born and raised in Spokane, Washington. I had a number of professions, including real estate agent, pharmaceutical sales person, and buyer for a clothing firm. During my years in the fashion industry I had an opportunity to work with Eva Gabor, who was making appearances on TV selling a line of cocktail wear. People had been asking where they could get the gowns she was wearing, so her couture designer, a clothing manufacturer by the name of Louis Estevez, was marketing the clothing that Gabor appeared in to major high-end couture accounts. I introduced the clothing line to fashionable stores in 11 western states. You couldn’t buy these gowns at Walmart.

I was always interested in how elements of color, texture, and composition could be joined to create a thing of beauty. My years of bringing together color, design, and people developed in me an artistic eye that would come to serve a good purpose in my eventual role as artist.

Beginnings of Art
I retired eight years ago and decided I needed a hobby. I wasn’t a good golfer. I think everyone has some passion – something that we can do until our ears are ringing from fatigue. Each of us has some activity that we can keep doing until we look at the clock and can’t believe how much time has passed. That’s what art has become for me.

While I was still working for Gabor I had a vivid dream. I think, perhaps, that it was more of a vision because it came to haunt my imagination. I saw myself standing on top of a lonely mountain with the wind blowing through my hair. The vision seemed so real that I tried to get people to paint it for me. Finally, I had a ski accident that laid me up for a long time. While my wounds were healing a friend of mine said I should get a couple brushes and some paints. Maybe I could become an artist. I had dabbled in art throughout my life, but that day I followed that woman’s advice and the first thing I did was attempt to paint the vision of myself on the mountain that had been haunting me for years.

The experience of painting that picture served to launch my career. My girlfriend encouraged me to keep going with my art. “Paint what you see,” she told me. “Just paint the things in your room.” And then she added, “See if you can get round bottles to look round.” So that’s what I did.

Even though I’m self-taught, I spent time studying the works of many other artists learning to do what they do. I still visit museums, plus I read a lot about art, and watch carefully what’s going on in the world around me. I’m currently taking instruction from Chung Ae, an award-winning Korean artist living in Lafayette.

A number of my productions have just been for fun! My son once bought an iguana. He constructed a fancy cage, added a limb from a tree, and displayed it in a window that he constructed in the front of a closet. He commissioned me to paint a jungle scene on glass for the back of the cage. I turned it into a big production and carefully studied iguana habitats to make the scene as realistic, as possible. I did a good job, I thought. When we put the iguana into his new environment he acted like he felt right at home. (I must admit that the creature was also acting exactly as he behaved when in the middle of my son’s driveway. Iguanas are not particularly expressive animals.)

Making Art with Anything on Everything
I never put boundaries around my art. I will paint with any colors on almost anything that comes to my hand. I use a number of media, and almost anything can serve as my canvas. I came into possession of a stack of tiles, for example, and it occurred to me that I could paint pictures on some of the tile surfaces. The surfaces had a variety of textures. Some were quite rough; others were relatively smooth. I incorporated the character of the surface into the pictures I began creating. For example, I did a picture on one of the tiles from a sketch called “The Male Torso” and used irregularities and crevasses in the tile to define the figure’s muscular back, and to help position the torso on the tile.

The results of my tile projects turned out wonderful! The paint worked into the tile to create a marble effect. People gravitated to these pictures. They are particularly suitable as table art so I don’t frame them but sell them with a table stand. They make a great room accessory!

I find oil to be the most fun artistic medium to work with because it is so fluid and adaptable. With oil I can easily provide much greater depth of color in a work than I can get with pastels or watercolors. Plus, I can mix and combine colors to create an unbounded range of shades creating nuances and gradations of hues all the way from nearly perfect blacks to subtle off-whites – including every hue of the color spectrum lying between those extremes.

Watercolor has its own charms and challenges. A watercolor creates itself to some extent. The medium is fluid and final colors are much less obvious than with other media. As a particular watercolor dries, it takes on a hue that differs subtly from the original undried version. Purists prefer the more stable behavior of pastels but I went against that common wisdom and used only trays of watercolors in creating pictures of subjects from European churches to American clotheslines.

I’ve also done art using pastels, which are created from powdered pigments ground into a paste and then rolled into sticks. I also use acrylics, which are water soluble colors providing relatively heavy effects. Acrylic goes on like oil paint but is not as fluid. It is useful for creating harsher, less subtle effects. You can mix things with the acrylic for special effects – such things as retarders that slow the drying time making acrylic go on even more like oil paint. Even with a retardant, however, these substances dry in 15 minutes. Therefore, working in acrylic requires a certain deftness and economy of motion to create the desired effect within the allotted time. It is easy for acrylic to be done with you before you are done with it.

I also like working with conté crayon, which is an especially hard pencil having a lead of mixed clay and graphite. Conté crayon goes on almost like chalk. However, it is a difficult medium because it creates very discrete markings on the surface. It isn’t soft like regular chalk and you can’t easily blend lines together with your fingers or rub out mistakes. But the harder lines left by a conté crayon create some marvelous special effects.

The Manner of My Art
I did the portrait of an elderly man using conté crayon. The face was an invention of my mind. I began by creating a set of intense and wise eyes and then added a strong nose. As I created the man’s head, piece by piece, I was watching with interest to see what the final results would be. I ended up with an old man gazing with rapt attention at a light. I called the work “Seeing the Light” and my own spirit became caught up in the moment of truth the old man was obviously having. The figure looked as though he had been painted by a renaissance portrait artist. I have developed a flare for adding renaissance effects to pieces of art.

I love to start a theme and then carry it forward in other pictures using other media with altered environments. My signature piece, for example, is called Freedom. It depicts a girl walking down an ocean beach. It was one of my first watercolors. Since then I have reproduced it in oil. The painting is a version of the original vision I had of myself with dress floating and hair flying while walking beside the sea that I love. I did a picture of the same woman passing away from the viewer up a stairway into the clouds. The cloud-bent figure represents the impulse of my spirit – to slip the ties binding me to earth and stride on light steps into the skies of my hopeful imagination.

Art performs it’s most magical service, I believe, when it allows imagination to take us into areas that are hidden from our conscious mind. The ancient artists used to speak about their muse, and I know just what they meant, because in a sense a work of art takes on a life of its own, and it often seems to lend a hand in its own creation. When I’m applying the colors to a surface I never have perfect knowledge of what the result will be. My Running Lady, for example, and my Old Man absolutely created themselves.

I love to create good art and people enjoy seeing my works. I was invited to do this article because someone from 110° Magazine saw a show I had in Antioch and was interested in the variety and depth of my works. I find my art to be both satisfying and exciting. And others do as well, it seems.

There is real joy in being able to take something that is in my mind and reproduce it, as it were, on a piece of canvas or whatever surface I’m working on. Any delight that people subsequently take from viewing the creation, or any money I receive, is just icing on the top of the cake.

I’m at the happy point in my life where I can work for the joy of the art. I just maneuver through life these days doing what I want to do. I mix relaxation with happy bouts of intense creativity. I have three children and eleven grandchildren. So far I have taught three of my grandchildren how to paint.

I have no specific plans or goals for the future. I’m living in the moment, which is the way life should basically be lived, I think. For sure, it is the way we should pass through retirement. I sometimes see older people who look like they’re standing in life’s check out line. What a waste! I don’t know about tomorrow, but I’m prepared to enjoy it – or at least to live it to the full, whatever it brings.

My life is full of good people and happy activities. I’m always looking for the next thing. I’m keeping my eye out for beauty wherever I can find it.