December 2, 2001
Evoking the Spirit of Wood
Painter Larry Nielson Makes The Most
of Old Barn Scraps
By Joshua Kors
St.
George, UT —
The third graders of East Elementary stood and stammered. How could they not?
Their fieldtrip to the Rosenbruch Wildlife Museum had swept them through African
savannah, desert and swamp. But behind the bontebok, impala and chacma baboon
lay a series of creatures so strange, so enchanting, they are cordoned off into
their own room in the back of the building.
They are the creatures of Larry Nielson. And unlike their brethren in the museum's
main display, they were neither shot nor stuffed but painted on pine slabs with
a fine-bristled brush. Nielson, one of Utah's most accomplished wildlife painters,
is currently the featured artist at the Rosenbruch Museum. His work is so powerful
it makes noisy kids mute —
and turns others into seasoned art critics.
"You can see how he outlined the dolphins," noted Riley Pullman, 8.
"He outlined them in white —
and only on the top —
because the light is coming from the top. That's really cool."
"It's really cool how he painted it and drawed it on wood," opined
Meghan Fessia, 9. "It looks like (the animals) are real. But they're not.
They're just on wood."
Or
are they? As titters of fascination swept through Kay Small and Karlee Davenport's
third grade classes, theories of every ilk began to take flight. Some said the
animals were painted on top of the wood. Others said no, they were injected
into it somehow. Still others insisted the pine slabs naturally had the animal
images on them, that the wood had been hung without artist's ink.
Nielson delights in such debate. More than awards and government honors, he
says, the confusion of museumgoers is the highest complement his wood animals
can receive.
A classically trained artist, Nielson spent half a century painting on paper
and canvas along with the rest of the world. His work in such conventional mediums
had earned him accolades: He secured a teaching position at Brigham Young University-Hawaii
and was commissioned by the government of Tonga to paint the official portrait
of the late Queen Salote. He even carved out a career designing posters for
Tinseltown rock stars, like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles.
Everything changed four years ago. Nielson discovered the call of wood. He has
never turned back.
"I grew up in Ephraim County, and I'd always gone up to the ranch and seen
the incredible wood —
how it weathers and the textures and personality that come out of different
wood surfaces, especially when it gets ancient and craggily," Nielson said.
"About four years ago I saved some pieces of wood like that because I was
able to see things in there, like the way people look at clouds and see images
in them. The wood spoke to me. I could literally feel when I looked at some
of the pieces an essence of something just beyond the wood."
Evoking that essence quickly became a full-time obsession. Nielson dropped the
standard art surfaces to devote all his energies to the medium of wood. Today
he speaks passionately of red pine —
and of the collection of pine bears, owls, monkeys and tigers that will run
at the Rosenbruch Museum through Jan. 1.
"Painting on pine is like dancing with a partner where you feel there's
a bond between you and the wood, which has a lot of different hues, different
configurations," Nielson said. "Even rusty nails and knot holes, they
add to the spirit I'm trying to express."
Nielson expresses that spirit by incorporating the oddities of the wood into
the painting. A rough patch in the pine becomes the tussled coat of a black
bear; a white rift in the wood become the wake in the water left by two dolphins.
It's that unity of the surface and the image that wows museumgoers.
"I've never seen art work like this before," said Syndee Jolley, who
accompanied her daughter Jaycee to the exhibit. "I just think about the
wood and how hard it is, how much insight you really have to have to make the
lines of the wood work. He uses not only the lines but the shades to create
depth, like on the mouth of the bear —
the wood was dark right there, and he used that darkness to make the mouth."
Jolley isn't the only one who's impressed. When word spread about Nielson's
pine paintings, art fans near and far leapt to lend a hand.
"I get a lot of people that will call me now," the artist said. "Somebody
called from Lewiston, Idaho, not long ago and said he had a barn they were going
to tear down. Then somebody called from Fillmore, then Fairview, then several
places around here. People will just come sometimes and bring some boards over
and leave them here. They don't even tell me who brought them."
Nielson's contributors may work in the dark, but his fans certainly don't. Dustin
Hammer, curator of the Rosenbruch Museum, said that during the Huntsman Senior
Games there was a visible rush to purchase Nielson's paintings. Hammer thinks
he knows why.
"He's a fabulous artist, and his paintings are a unique form of art most
people have probably never seen," he said. "They've got character."
Like Nielson.
Larry Nielson's wood
paintings will remain the featured exhibit at Rosenbruch Wildlife Museum
till Jan. 1. For more information, call (435) 656-0033 or visit
the museum on the web at www.rosenbruch.org. |