Although I do not consider myself a real artist, I love to try to paint. And I love the company of artists, those people for whom the scales have dropped from their eyes, who see things with a fresh outlook and can recognize beauty or humor in strange places. What is more, I never fail to enjoy being in the homes of artists. No matter how grand or humble, they almost always sparkle with personality.
A case in point is a party I attended recently. The food was delicious, and beautiful to the eye, as well, but my eyes kept wandering to my surroundings, where little touches surprised and delighted me, like a simple cluster of blue and green tapered bottles.
Some artists may have homes that are sleek, austere and elegant, but I think most of them have a little trouble tolerating negative space. So many things have such a potential for interest that the artist cannot resist displaying them.
Even their walls pack a wallop, perhaps in overall color, or interesting arrangements, pictures or murals. Artists who paint or draw are visual people who delight in creating things striking for the rest of us to behold.
It is a pretty subjective talent. Beauty is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. One person may like a painting, while another hates it; but the thing about art is that it touches our emotions.
Now, I can just hear you saying, “I know plenty of people who are not artists, yet who have created beautiful, well-designed homes or surroundings equal to or better than anything your artists can produce.”
I have an answer for you; those people are, themselves, artists. They just may not realize it yet.
Come to think of it, I would not be at all surprised to find that everyone is, in some way, an artist. That creative spirit just needs to be freed. I’d bet we’re all capable of cave drawings.
Pat Wayman, herself an artist, and I were discussing recently a painting by Sami Austin. We agreed that she is so good, her work would probably make her famous in New York City. Yet here she is in Columbus, Miss. It sort of makes one think of Thomas Grey’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”
“Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
Well, let me tell you, I don’t want us folks in the Golden Triangle to be a wasteland of desert air! Our population may be small, but our talent is not. I look around my own house and realize that I have actually started my own collection of local artists.
I have a Margie Beasley, a Clara Faye West, a Viola Yeates (my grandmother and my absolute favorite), a Mary Betts Williams, a Wayman, an Adrianne Penney, a Eugenia Summer, a Kay Calaway footstool and some of her Christmas creations, along with some Patti Johnson’s, a small Kevin Voller, a small Selden Lambert wire sculpture, a couple of Bernice Pearsons and a Peggy Stokes (the last two from Louisville), an anonymous landscape, which I bought at a craft fair and cherish, a Margaret Whiting collage, and a whole bunch of Betty Stones — which may have to be hung in the garage as I collect more.
Betty Boyls Stone is a freelance writer, who grew up in Columbus.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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