A production of South Carolina ETV.

For nearly 20 years, artists have graciously lent their names and their images to the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

Their original artwork, limited edition prints, and posters have helped to contribute significantly to the endowment in support of public broadcasting.

Tonight, this program salutes nine artists who are representative of the gallery of artists whose diverse and symbolic images of the South have enriched all our lives and.

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In.

For Charleston artist Marti Whaley Adams.

Her summer home in flat Rock, North Carolina, is as integral to her work as is her galleries studio at number two, Queen Street, as basic, as necessary, and as inspirational as digging in the dirt to get dirty, to really join yourself with the garden by getting in and getting your hands in it.

I've never had good fingernails because of it, because of the painting.

Also.

But it's that you're willing to wallow in it if you need to, to to get something to be right, to see a seed sprout.

You know, the miracle of every day, comes forth in something like the germination of a seed and seasons and changes.

And it's why I love being up here is, we don't have air conditioning.

I hear every sound.

Butterflies come through the porch.

This house is special.

But this particular house I owned with my mother for about 12 years.

And the two of us lived here together in the summers we created here together.

We even had a mission statement for this house, which was that the people who lived here would be creative and have fun.

Fun is a big part of creativity.

Your.

Marty's mother was Emily Whaley, the Mrs. Whaley of Mrs. Whaley Charleston Garden fame and Mrs. Whaley entertains.

She was a wonderful artist.

I think with my mother.

There was a direct statement, a direct way of saying anything, she thought, and she wanted to cut right through.

But, I think I'm influenced by her love of the domestic, her love of, beauty.

The way she appreciated the home and flower arranging and food and preparation and happiness to slow down enjoyment of of the moment.

It's something I hope I'll always want to do is to go walk, stroll.

And that's something I learned from my mother to look, to see.

You know, when I first started out there, I didn't know what I wanted to paint, and I think I was held up for years not knowing.

And, I then got into all these flower arrangements.

I did.

It's a wonderful way to start, you know, to find subject matter, what is right around you.

And so I often paint these flowers that, as a matter of fact, the flowers you see here will become paintings.

I paint dogs, cats, horses, landscape, interiors.

It's, you know, I can't control.

It's whatever I think is beautiful.

But what is it about a given subject that makes you want to paint it?

It's the nuance of colors.

Perhaps.

There may be a beautiful way the sunlight is hitting something or a color that emanates that is special or rare or magical.

Or there may be a scent, even, but there's something unique about that thing, whatever it is.

And I say, I wonder if I can make that happen on a canvas.

I want to I want to keep it, capture it.

And, you know, you can wait for a muse to hit you to to enter and say, we're now going to paint.

But to me, I really I can't afford to do that.

And I'm painting what I want to paint.

I think before it was that this would make me happy or that or it would sell, or that someone gave me a wonderful compliment.

All want a blue ribbon for something?

And I did it well once.

So do it again.

And now I'm much more willing to step out into thin air and just paint.

If you had to introduce Marty Whaley Adams, the artist, to someone who is unfamiliar with your work, what would you tell them?

Who is she?

Who?

That's a wonderful question.

I would say that she is a girl and she's a woman and that she transcends, several centuries.

One foot is in the 18th century and one is in the 21st.

I have a certain old fashioned quality about me in love of tradition.

At the same time, I. I love to, take chances and take risks.

I love to, do this in my art.

I like to see things differently in every way.

I like to try a different attitude about something.

I've been happier when I've been able to change.

And I'm a I'm a type that loves to listen to other people's opinions about something to me, to paint well or do anything well, you've got to be willing to do what I call free falling.

It's like stepping off into thin air and not be afraid.

And and you need to have failed and pick yourself back up.

I want my work to be about, oh, I just want someone who is not afraid to be different.

Someone who is not afraid to be a character, who is having fun in life and is taking it as it comes, you know, in her stride.

And, and I think my work is about a certain exuberance and a thrill about being alive.

They are the signs and billboards of yesteryear.

Familiar ads of simpler, less hectic times, nostalgic reminders of days gone by, old houses, old barns and dirt country roads.

This is the world that Denmark artist Jim Harrison helps us remember.

I was 14 years old and looking for a summer job, had an interest in art and my class at school.

I was the one that did the bulletin board for the teachers.

I don't recall having any special art talent at the time except an inclination to do that.

So I wanted and must have gone for sign up and ask him if he needed some help, and he took me on right away.

Today, Jim Harrison is nationally recognized for his fine arts paintings, many of which incorporate the sign images he learned in his youth.

I've done a lot of work, with all advertisements.

I've done a lot of paintings that had a variety of advertising and sell them, not just Coca-Cola.

And that, of course, came from my connection with Mr. Cornforth and our involvement with painting signs and all kinds of ads.

An avid collector, Harrison's studio is filled with the signs of nostalgia.

I can't tell you why, but back, even in the early 50s, when I worked with Mr. Carnforth, we would put a lot of these metal signs up and therefore we'd take a lot of them down as it became outdated, and I saved them and collected them and had them in a garage or out in my yard.

I'm talking about huge things that would be worth a fortune today.

Well, a friend of mine that was in the antique business came along and, and they were out in the yard and they didn't mean quite as much to me.

Then.

So I gave them to to him at one time.

And then again I started and did it again and gave that away.

But the ones I have now, I'm not giving away.

They are for sale.

When I first started with Mr. Cohen for the 1951, he had the contract with the local Denmark Coca-Cola Bottling Company, and we painted, mainly for them.

And, so through the years, I've had just a connection with the Coca-Cola bottler here in Denmark.

I inherited that sign business when, Mr. Carnforth retired.

I continued to do it even when I was coaching painting the Coca-Cola signs.

So it was a natural thing for me to eventually include that in my fine art and the paintings.

Most of my earliest paintings were from right around the mall, pretty close to home.

Here, and I started commercially going to sidewalk shelves, and I found certain things that would sell.

Now.

The seacoast has always been popular.

For a long time I painted a lot of sand dunes.

SEO Marsh scenes, and they were very popular.

And still on one day here we were going to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I took a canvas, ten by 20 canvas, and I simply painted it red and painted the Coca-Cola trademark on it.

I don't know why I did that, but when we got to Fort Lauderdale and set up my booth, that first thing we sold.

And so began Harrison's commercial success and his identity as a licensed painter of the Coca-Cola image.

I use acrylics now.

I paint on a canvas, sometimes on masonite, sometimes on an illustration board.

But most of the time I'm using acrylic on canvas, I struggle, it's not an easy thing for me to do to paint that.

People don't believe that, it's an acquired skill.

It's not something that just fell out of the sky and landed in my hand.

It's something that I've learned to.

And the the accomplishment for me is in the fact that I know what I could or couldn't do 30 years ago.

And what I've learned to do now.

Steve Jordan, the painter.

I don't know Steve Jordan, the painter is that much different from me all the time.

You know, I just happened to enjoy making visual statements.

You know, visual images.

People.

Southern coastal realism, beach scenes, animals, satire and whimsy.

All fair game for Steven Jordan.

Early on in my career.

Visual things inspired me.

After painting for 30 years, you start getting where you're you're a level of being inspired is your threshold is higher, you know, and then you start.

What I enjoy is painting ideas.

I start getting ideas that I can paint without actually seeing something for years.

If I ever saw a when I saw a drawbridge sign in front of a drawbridge, I mean, I'm a literal person.

I thought there should be an artist standing there sketching, following, you know, obeying the sign.

So.

So that was an idea that became a series of paintings.

Rather than seeing the bridge and thinking, I should paint this.

Jordan's commercial success can be traced to the image.

Flaws show an interesting work, coupled with the decision to launch his now famous poster editions.

It was a floor show, so that's how I got the title of floor show shows, because the song is creating a shadow show on the floor.

But I decided that that image was good enough to market, and I decided to do an open ended poster edition rather than a limited edition.

And my thinking was, I'd rather sell these forever for less money than print a few of them and sell for more money.

He is perhaps best known for his casual beach scene.

I was just walking on the Solomon Islands beach one day, and I saw that as just as a still life.

I'd never taken my shoes off.

And I don't drink beer.

I never had done that.

Taking my shoes off, put my beer in them, and I didn't realize I was going to hit a nerve of thousands of people who had done that.

And a lot of people think I was a lifeguard and beach bum, because that's what I paint.

But growing up in Anderson upstate and not seeing the beach except on spring break, I guess the beach was more visual visually entertaining to me because I hadn't seen it all those years growing up for about 30 years, I've been predominantly watercolorist, and even when I do acrylic, I would always use it in an Aquarius manner, very wet and fluid.

Doing a lot of tilting with the paint, letting the paint run.

And, just recently I was introduced to, Genesis synthetic oil paint, which is a heat set oil paint.

I never liked oil painting because of the smell and the drying time and the fact that you have to wait six months for it to dry to frame it.

You know, I can do a watercolor and frame and have it up the same day.

And I'm just that kind of a personality.

I'm very impatient.

I like the immediacy of watercolor.

Now I have an oil medium that I can enjoy all the buttery transitions, all the different advantages that, oil painting has.

And then when I'm finished with it, I heat dry.

And it's done my recent work within the last ten years, I'm working on slick paper and I'm using thick paint, and I'm not building up layers of washes.

And so I don't really paint like a water like the watercolor is that I was trained as, and that I used to.

We take these little gentle washes and build up color.

I mean, I take thick paint, go for the darks right away and lift color and push and pull it and slide it around on the paper.

So my transition from that to oil painting has been very comfortable.

I mean, it's just been very, very a natural change for me.

I love doing new things.

I love surprising my audience and and surprising myself, you know, standing back and saying, wow, that's like nothing I've ever done before.

To me, that's what creativity is about.

Not repeating your past successes, but trying something new and succeeding at it.

My father became ill with Alzheimer's and I did did some work.

Some paintings that had his image in them and some pieces that, that were symbolic of his struggle with this disease.

And then of course, I have a five year old.

And when she came into my life, then all of a sudden I have a new subject.

So I've done paintings of her, which has been fun.

His Charleston Wildlife series strikes a humorous chord.

I just got this idea that I could put wild animals in Charleston scenes and paint them in a different way.

I could do a tried painting of a Charleston street scene or.

Or the basket ladies or Rainbow Row, and jacked an animal out of its element.

There creates, an element of humor.

And it also allows me to paint Charleston.

But I like to think my, my, my really successful pieces are universal themes.

Humor is a universal, taking a second look at something that's interesting, that's universal.

I really can't paint anything unless it's something that I am in love with at the time.

I mean, I am absolutely almost teary eyed about it to do it, and, that sounds silly and stupid, but the I am more successful with the things that I'm in love with the most.

And if you paint from the heart, you know that's the only thing I know of to.

Bob Timberlake began painting the simple, nostalgic scenes of his North Carolina homeland images, which evoked a responsive chord in audiences around the world.

But I was 30 years old before I'd ever been in an art gallery or museum, or had even seen an original work of art that I know of.

I thought about it a lot, and I when I first started painting, when I was, you know, like 30 in my 30s, I really, thought about it.

And so when I woke up, when this light bulb changed in my hand, I wanted to collect it.

I wanted to paint it.

I wanted to do every part of today.

Timberlake is one of the most successful designers of home furnishings the world over.

Renowned as a painter, he still lives in his hometown of Lexington, North Carolina, and he still paints the things around him, the objects that he loves.

But what is this place?

Well, that's a controversial thing.

But anyway, no, really, it's it's just really a design studio.

It's a barn.

It's about 7000ft of artifacts and collectibles and things that I've gathered since I was 4 or 5 years old, put together, sort of to use for designs for everything you can think of.

It's just a place that really makes the juices flow.

His Bob Timberlake gallery is a testament to his success.

We built a gallery here in Lexington and to, to hopefully share with people our world.

That was really what we wanted to do.

Perhaps venture into furniture design can be traced to this chest, a project of his youth, and to the wisdom of furniture maker Fred Craver.

He took me kind of under his wing, and he tried to teach me and show me, and got across his love and affection for wood and furniture.

He would rub the wood and tell me stories about wood.

He would take blocks of and read the rings of wood and show me where there was a fire in the woods.

When we started.

That's how we started with him, with his ideas, his finishes, his finishes.

I.

By the way, I'm not a designer as much as I am the collector of all of these wonderful, talented people that I have somehow been able to cross paths with the whole time I'm painting, I'm imagining what this is about.

Depending on the subject of I dream about people that are painting called South Carolina Heritage of a Little Drummer boys coat.

I mean, I dreamed about what he was doing and what he was.

You know, he wasn't probably more than 12 years old.

And in battle and and war and it just it made me cringe.

It makes me just just, you know, about my children and my grandchildren.

I got seven grandchildren that it just makes me wonder about the history that all the history that we've had and all these things I'm doing.

Most all of them have a story behind them.

And those stories I'm sitting there conjuring up in my head the whole time.

But if we were to go back to Bob Timberlake, the artist, although I don't know how you separate from Bob Timberlake, all these other people.

What inspires him to power?

My family?

My family.

The most, wonderful thing has happened in my life is my family.

With my family and my better three fourths, my wife, Gaye.

With them.

I feel like I can do anything I.

From his early days at Riverwood, the studio immortalized in many of his works, Timberlake has moved to a new location today.

His pride and joy is the studio that he has lovingly designed and restored.

But this place I was meant, I really believe, to have his place.

And if it hadn't been for this place, there are a lot of things not happened that I hope benefit a lot of people and have brought a lot of joy and pleasure to a lot of people.

Well, I can't do anything else.

So I paint and I love it.

I really paint because I love doing it.

I don't try to send any messages off, make any profound statements.

I just paint.

Second class is fine.

Jamie Wilder is known primarily as a watercolorist for vivid hues and distinctive detail have earned her accolades from critics and collectors alike.

I just fell in love with watercolor, and I did that for about 20 years before I started painting a few hours, which is what I I'm trying to do now a little bit, but I'm still watercolor is still my first love, and I guess I always will be where after like things evolve and series.

I've always painted in series because I get caught up in something that I really enjoy.

And for a while I was painting my family, portraits and the frames.

And so I put the the pictures are the photographs in an environment which became a still life because it was an environment of things that, associated identified with the subjects.

So I guess I was doing still lifes and I didn't realize it.

But anyway, that just evolved and still lifes, I think because I had a garden one year and, brought in a lot of vegetables, and I thought they were so pretty that I needed to paint them.

So I painted squash and and eggplant and tomatoes for a long time now, I've sort of gotten into painting, a scene outside the window.

So I take a photograph or something that I've had for years, maybe, and, and use that scene behind a still life.

Recently, she's delved into the medium of oils after you paint watercolors for 20 years or more.

Oh, well, I'm not that easy.

And it's real, real messy.

Well, one time this sounds kind of crazy, but I love to smell it.

And, I like the feel of it.

My brush.

And I like the idea.

I can fix it, keep making it better until I ruin it.

Oh, it's wonderful.

I just love it.

I don't know why.

Her laughter is infectious, and you soon realize that Jeannie sense of humor predominates, even when she's talking about a subject as close to her heart as her art.

I love Palin, I think, I enjoy the way, the subject, interacts with the, cloth of background wallpaper or whatever.

I like the way it interacts, and sometimes I like the loose part of the subject in the background.

I have.

So one time in Florence, I believe it was, and I wrote up a little article in the paper about it, and I didn't realize that.

I didn't realize who Jeannie Wilder, the artist, was until I read that.

And I was really surprised because, as I said, Janie Wilder likes to paint food.

And I look back at the show and sure enough, it was all food.

And now that I think about it, I really do love to paint food.

I mean, pears really.

Pears turn me on big time.

They like people, you know, you turn them all kind of ways and you see their little shapes in the way they turn and they have expressions.

Have you ever looked at one look at 2 or 3, line of mouth on a table and look at what they look like?

People and I paint a lot of glass.

Well, I'm really not painting the glass.

I'm packing what's in the glass?

What's behind the glass under it?

Because after all, glass is nothing but clear.

It's clear.

And you see through it and around it, and it's the little nuances of color that bounce and splash around that I paint.

But the ball jars now, they're really challenging because I have the print printing on them raised up, and I stick things down in them, you know, like lemons of what I'm I want to stick it down at home and paint through the glass.

And I see all kinds of distortions.

If it's not distorted, it doesn't look real.

Is there anything you want to paint you haven't attempted?

I want to go to France and paint where Monet painted, and I'll.

I might not paint already painted because I don't want to be in competition with them.

I but I would like to paint well, painting.

For now, however, she's content to just continue painting the things that bring her joy.

Kyle Lipscomb is an artist who enjoys a challenge.

A prolific and highly acclaimed painter, his works are a testament to his myriad interests and his enthusiasm, some for the art he loves a tart for 15 years all over the country and, and my one of my main incentives was to try to get people to realize that, gee, this is something you can take all your life and you you don't have to you don't have to get too serious about it, but just set aside some time and enjoy this great, great sport.

I worked on a series called The Seekers, which is we all seeking.

Everybody, all four of us here today are seekers of one thing, another.

Life is that way.

And, I think that's a theme that I continue to enjoy.

Every now and then I will, page several more seekers this year where people, looking for something they're looking for, pleasure.

They're looking for satisfaction in their lives.

And the, you know, they're looking for looking for a way to contribute.

There are all kinds of things that make us seekers, and we all are seekers.

The way often works in acrylics.

Now, Lipscomb was a founding member of the South Carolina Watercolor Society and made his mark in that medium.

Watercolor has a way of, being particularly exciting and atmospheric, type paintings because you you get you can get a feeling of atmosphere with the white people coming through the pigment.

With watercolors.

Mighty hard to get with anything else.

It has a charm in that direction for particular for landscapes and seascapes.

That's, So the thing that I think is unique.

But, I stayed with watercolor a long time, and I think Robert Wood, the West Coast painter, influenced my thinking.

And working with watercolor more than any one man.

Building on Wood's work, Lipscomb developed a technique which he called open color painting.

He had a way of of, getting watercolor, an abstract on the page as a background, an abstract painting on the background.

Then he would work realism into the back, into the, into the, abstract background.

My, contribution to that, process was that I would leave some dry places on the page, and this would wind up with being being areas you would tilt the page and put the color at the top of the page, and would run around the dryer as the watercolor would move across the dry areas.

The reason it worked so well is the fact that the color that was on here just works his way right into his head and all that.

All I did was put his hands in his face and the painting was done.

About five years ago, Lipscomb began to work with non representational shapes, eagerly embracing ideas he had not tried before.

Well, I want this to be dark, a dark value where the this this is a figure eight and I'm going to use it the, ever the scientist Lipscomb approaches each work as a problem to be solved.

My motif in this particular painting, I find that the that, predictability is something I don't like.

And when you, when you, when a painting or a process becomes predictable, it loses all of its zest.

As far as I'm concerned, as far as its excitement.

So that's this kind of work is completely unpredictable.

Do not have any idea how this painting will come out.

Like his father, Lipscomb is a chemist by training.

He successfully headed a manufacturing company until deciding in 1975 to retire to a new career.

I like to work on 4 or 5 six things at one time for efficient.

As a businessman, you learn to be efficient.

His willingness to take risks is another business trait that has served him well.

A lot.

A lot of people stay with one style of work throughout their lives, and it's awfully easy to get in a in a in a position where people expect something of you, the same kind of thing that you start off and made successfully, you have to take that risk when you when the spirit moves up and.

Painting friend who said I didn't like this, where I guess they would just keep on looking at you.

Don't don't throw it out the window, of your mind, you know, keep looking at.

I'm fascinated by it, by each piece as I work on it.

And I have a lot of energy.

My wife says I wear, completely.

I think I do.

So, and therefore it's.

And, I think that each day.

The.

Charleston's and Worsham Richardson is often called the bird lady and acclaimed wildlife artist.

She is arguably South Carolina's foremost painter of bird portraits.

And I had bird feeders outside.

Not always painted birds, you know, because they were alive.

Anything alive?

I wanted to paint.

But why just paint birds?

Because no one else was doing them around.

And I wanted to be different.

I wanted to be, you know, do something that nobody else was doing right then.

And of course, in the art shows, abstracts were very popular in the 50s and 40s.

When I was coming along.

And so my work I am here to judge one day say birds like that.

And they didn't select mine for the show.

As Richardson's watercolors gained popularity, her reputation soon grew far beyond Charleston.

Someone that lived on Park Avenue started buying my painting, and she showed them to Kennedy Galleries in New York.

And I could do wood ducks and all kind of ducks.

See, I did that in 1958.

I think it's one of the most vital looking ones.

Far as animation goes.

I was concentrating a lot on animation in the late 50s, in the 60s, and those those paintings I would sit in a flat bottom boat in a marsh and look at the ducks rise till I get an imprint of an.

And did you think of yourself as an ornithologist?

Because obviously you studied birds as much as they.

Well, I followed ornithologists through the woods.

I would listen to what they said along the way.

Richardson also became a bird resuscitated.

A game warden brought me a live bird that had a injury to swing.

He says, now, this bird's too beautiful to just put sleep or anything, and you could use it for a model.

He'd already seen some of my paintings, so he said, but you have to fill out these papers and get a permit.

And so I, started on rehabbing birds.

I learned from books that I got.

I got a whole series of books on what birds eat in the wall.

So when I got a new bird that I didn't understand what their diet should be, I look in the book, they make a simulated diet.

You know, best I could, have a cardinal that was 17 years old on June the 7th.

It was a naked little thing when I got it.

Had just sets that morning, and the lady brought it to me and showed it to me.

She had it wrapped in a Kleenex and said the mother was killed by her cat.

And she said the other two little birds were killed.

And could I please take it and see if I could raise it?

Had no idea it would live.

It looked like a oyster, translucent, and hold it up to light and see the heartbeat.

And that's a portrait of me right now.

See, that can't be the mail.

It's a one opinion 13 times.

So he's been a model bird.

Many of Richardson's most prominent subjects were once her houseguests will have enjoyed the sale him now for pets we've had since 1981.

He's a real interesting owl, but I've done a lot of screech owls.

I had one screech owl 16 years.

I'm painting him 24 times.

Juvenile pelican was I got a call from a man on a battery, said that, he had this pelican in his garage, and it had shrimp all over the garage.

Could I come get it then?

He only bought a package of ceramics.

Williams fruit.

Well, so he didn't like the shrimp that my choose from all over the courts.

And it was getting pretty foul.

So he wanted that pelican out of there.

So I got bait fish about eight inches long from Walmart and they frosted them and fed him and he couldn't fly.

So I tell my husband, John Passaic, I'd say, John, will you let the keep the dogs in and I'll walk the pelican?

I wanted them next.

So he flopped behind me as he went across the good lawn, but he couldn't raise up.

He couldn't fly.

Yet he's a juvenile.

In the right of the painting.

You have to for your auction.

The tarragon falcon over there was was brought to me from a ship on a ship.

And the sailors came up to walk with this falcon on the arm.

And, I said they didn't even know what they had, but they had heard from the captain that I could take the bird, and he he was starving.

They had had him on his ship for several days, and he hadn't eaten anything, because all they offered him was cook food.

And of course, the raw meat being selected to do the official bird painting.

And the state was kind of nice.

I was invited before this family in Columbia by Governor West to do the official state bird and it was presented to the state, and it's in the Capitol building in Columbia.

Then in 1994, I was selected to do the official butterfly of the state, and that was kind of nice for me.

Because of her life's work, she says, I hope that brings the joy of living, the joy of live things, and some urgency on our part to protect the Waltons and the life we have around us.

We r g minor b I g minor, g me, little one, you know my you know my name.

You know what the r g minor I don't have a visual to work from.

At the moment of painting, I use my memory as my eyes to, transpose those images onto the canvas.

Jonathan Green is a memory weaver.

His bold, colorful Gullah images reflect the culture of his parents.

These people are from the coastal areas of, let's say, from North Carolina to Florida.

And, they are the people that have inhabited the marsh area and, marshland country area in some of the islands and their, descendants of, enslaved Africans.

Patterns and colors literally pulsate on his canvases.

I like using very basic colors.

My early knowledge of pattern is really what I saw as a child.

And, through exploring the use of pattern.

And I learned about why people choose or chose the patterns they did.

Part singer, part historian, green sees his role as a part of his heritage.

Because I'm painting my experience, my journey, I'm painting the landscape.

I'm painting the people that are in the landscape.

I'm not so interested in painting a specific person or a particular relative friend.

I'm interested in painting sort of a, Archetype, if you will, of persons living and working in that environment.

The environment is everything.

It would be very difficult to paint about what I paint about without living in the environment or as close to the environment as possible.

I need to be able to look out effortlessly and see the lushness of vegetation, the fluidity of water, the birds, the animals.

And I need a sense of clarity.

And seeing these things, I it would be very difficult to always focus, to look out of a window or to walk out of a door.

What?

I need to have as close a sense of living in the open, and yet a nice level of comfort in order to feel at home and at ease in painting.

The subject matter is that I paint at home in his studio in Naples, Florida.

By recreating the feel of his Carolina home, green has a sense of place.

It's really not about Naples.

It's about a place.

It's about what I remember as a child and the surroundings.

It could be almost anywhere, up and down the southeast coast.

Naples just happens to be the city that I came to and saw such a reminiscent felt of reminiscent of South Carolina and decided to settle down here, because this place affords me an opportunity to paint and, and and to put in long hours.

I need to be alone sometimes I need to be alone.

But yet I need to be in a self-contained environment.

And, the studio affords that.

I need to be around natural elements.

It was important to have the Mexican tile floor because it just seemed so natural and easy and comfortable.

I like the whiteness of the walls because it it's it's very spiritual for me.

And, I need to have openness.

I need high space.

I need to have artworks by other artists around me.

That's very important.

And I need a library around me.

I need food around me.

You referenced food a couple of times.

What is this thing with food?

Survival.

I love the smell of food.

I love, you know, food is food is is is the essence of life.

I think there's nothing more beautiful than being able to sit at a table with friends and have a great meal, every day here at the studio.

Including all the people here, the staff here, we sit in and have about a two hour lunch, and we get to know each other.

We get to talk about issues, we make decisions, we laugh, we discuss problems.

You know, it's it's so civilized.

And all of that happens around food.

I like the texture of oil.

I like the fact that it has a smell to it.

It takes time to dry.

So therefore you can rework it.

It's like cooking, if you will.

You can play with it.

Unlike acrylic, it's very difficult to play with acrylic, and there's no sense of smell.

And coming from the South, you have to have a sense of smell.

You have to play with things.

Every day is a new day.

Therefore, a new set of lessons that there's never a time when I feel that I'm not learning.

I'm constantly learning.

I'm learning how to paint, how to use paint, how not to over paint.

I'm learning how to simplify.

I think the, maturity in most art has to do with simplification.

These are my temple toys.

And, I've been working on this, design, for about 8 to 10 years.

And I have several shapes.

And, as a part of this design, and basically what I wanted to do was to continue to paint, but to paint on a three dimensional surface rather than to do sculpture as a very cold and sterile, artwork.

And, and after I came up with the design and, I realized that I could actually allow the paintings to almost move, if you will.

So it creates almost the effect of film and, and camera, so, this is, this is a very nice addition to seeing large paintings and small paintings to see a three dimensional work that you can actually walk around or just turn on your own.

So it's not just about art and painting.

It's about showing people that there is a beauty.

There is a love in a very mind minuscule area like gardens, garden in South Carolina.

And using that as a microcosm for the world.

Realism is what I'm all about.

I mean, You don't have to change anything can make it beautiful.

It's beautiful already.

All you got to do is, you know, like I said, showcase it.

He's noted for the remarkable believability of his murals that sort of fool the eye technique that makes you blink and wonder, is this a painting, or is it real?

His fairly outlandish public sculpture ideas and the exquisite, true to life depictions of his paintings on canvas?

This is the artist's blue sky.

So do you think of yourself principally as a muralist or a painter?

When later, or both or more, you know that and more.

I think my desire to manipulate objects is pretty much expressed in all phases of my life.

Like everything I have, I start changing around, you know, and reshaping and recoloring.

I paint easel paintings.

The this studio we're in here is just one of every motorcycle is a studio.

I mean, it's it's a portable studio.

I have little portable paint kits up here in the saddlebags, and little tiny easels fold up, and, I go exploring.

Not a typical day is I get up in the morning, decide which vehicle I'm going to use out of that whole chart of vehicles over there.

I check seated it's license and insured and that it's working right, that all mechanical problems on all these cars and boats and motorcycles and then I choose one and I go out, I see a scene and I paint it, and I work right out there on location, on site.

I am a romantic.

I. I see, I see nature in a romantic way.

I also tend to romanticize the scene, like where you take, Sam doing a painting of Lake Murray.

Now, often when I go up to Lake Murray, it looks drab, you know, like no waves.

And it's quiet and maybe it's misty and maybe it's humid and not very pretty.

What I'll do is I'll paint the scene in, and then I'll come back and I'll paint maybe clouds sweeping across, and I'll paint beautiful shafts of sunlight coming down through the clouds and light sparkling on the water.

All of it comes from my memory, you know, my imagination.

One thing I try to do with my murals like, tunnel vision, for example.

And, The mural at Creighton School is like, the mural become part of the environment, so you can't tell that it's really a painting.

And to do that, you have to sort of match it with the environment.

And the idea is to trick the people into believing that it's real and the mural presents some kind of absurd situation, usually, like the car is parked on the wall, or, tunnel vision has this huge tunnel going through a building that is to a suspension of disbelief.

It's to make people, just for a moment, see something that you know is awesome and indescribable and unpredictable.

Blue Sky the artist is somewhat of an enigma to begin with.

There's the name, and when I named myself blue Sky, I didn't mean that I was a cheerful disposition because anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a cheerful disposition.

I'm a sort of a cynical.

Grumpy, kind of not grumpy, but, bordering on sarcastic, person.

The blue sky means no boundaries.

It means without limit.

I was trying to name a self something that had an limitless potential.

Do you regret it when I'm drowning?

When I'm trying to cash in check, I regret it.

When I'm trying to check into a motel in some distant city where they don't know me, or, when I'm trying to buy something and I write them a check and.

There's this tendency to be, well, reclusive.

Even today, I can't stand being in the gallery, my art gallery.

When people are in there looking at my work.

But there's something just embarrassing about it.

It could be the fear of criticism or fear of overhearing criticism.

I do feel uneasy.

I've never liked art show openings.

I hate art show openings.

I have in a lot of cases, I've refused to go to openings, you know, just at the last minute and say, I'm not going.

And, I've had conflicts with that before where they said, oh, yes, you are.

Are you going to be here?

You know, and a lot of times I'll go real late, you know, when it's about over, if not at all.

I've actually not gone to an art one of my art openings, several of them, because I just don't like that feeling of being people knowing who me intimately and seeing me at the same time.

You know?

And I think if other people had experience that feeling, they would feel the same way, too.

I mean, it's, Maybe a lot of people haven't had a chance to put their feelings out and have them viewed by others.

Do you think you're a good artist, a good artist, a good artist?

I think I'm better than good.

Really.

I like me, I really do, I like me, I think I'm I'm good.

I'm.

I think I'm great.

I think, in fact, I think I haven't had a chance to really show what I can do.