Starkville artist leaves room for spontaneity

STARKVILLE, Miss. (AP) - Blank canvases aren’t a problem for artist Lee Gibson.

Before getting to serious business, she applies underpainting by spreading random colors here, there and everywhere until little or no white can be seen.

“I take the paint and put it on. That’s how it builds up,” she said. “There’s no real plan, which is a good thing. If I were to methodically think about it, that wouldn’t be spontaneous.”

One of her motivations for underpainting is frugality.

“I had all this excess paint,” she said. “Having Scottish roots, I said, ’This is a waste.’”

Another reason is the colors and ridges let her play.

“I try not to leave too much white. That can be distracting,” she said. “I take whatever’s available. I like a lot of contours. I do love the depth - drama, the more drama the better.”

Gibson, 70, has made a living as a professional artist for the past 12 years. Her work is featured at the Caron Gallery in Tupelo, as well as galleries in West Point, Oxford and Memphis.

A gallery owner once said Gibson is “a representational painter with a contemporary palette,” and she’s fine with that description. She tends toward bold colors for her portraits, landscapes and still lifes.

Gibson grew up in Maryland and Connecticut, and art was always available, if not encouraged.

“My dad was a painter, not for a living, but he was a pastel artist,” she said.

Her schools put an emphasis on art from kindergarten to high school, and she’d hoped to develop what she’d already learned while studying architecture at the University of Arizona.

“My design skills were great, but I didn’t know how to make the walls stand up,” she said. “You had to have the math skills.”

Gibson went back East to finish college. She earned an art degree, but didn’t put it to work immediately. She got married, raised a family and traveled with her husband from one job to another.

There were art projects along the way, but nothing compared to the past 12 years, which came about by way of necessity.

“It wasn’t until after our divorce that I said, ’Oh, I’m out of retirement. I’ve got to make a living now,’” she said. “I fell into this and got lucky.”

Until about six months ago, she worked in a spacious studio in West Point, but she has a special needs grandchild and was asked to move to Starkville to pitch in.

She bought a two-story house and promptly turned the upstairs into her studio.

One bedroom is filled with finished paintings of boats, barns, turkeys, bulldogs and more. Still more canvases are stored in the upstairs bathroom, and others are in the garage.

Another bedroom is for painting, and it’s filled with about 20 canvases covered with underpainting and ready to go.

Bins in the closet hold tubes of oil paint. Across the room, tubes of varying degrees of fullness are scattered around a trio of paint palettes. Her Scottish roots come into play again with the rolling pin she uses to squeeze out every last bit of paint.

“I’ve been doing a lot of wildlife for the last few years,” she said. “The season is here: the deer, the ducks, the turkey, the hunting dogs.”

She chooses her subjects with potential clients in mind, and this is the time of year for outdoor pursuits.

“A lot of guys like my work because it’s bold,” she said. “It has a masculinity to it.”

As the seasons roll by, Gibson shifts her focus.

“Spring comes and guess what moves? Flowers and all that kind of thing. Summer comes, guess what moves? The boats,” she said. “It’s not me. It’s not what I’m pushing. It’s the clients. It’s what they gravitate to. I have to rely on people buying the work to know what they’re after.”

She’s not always the best judge of what people want.

“I will take things to the gallery. I’ll leave and say, ’If that is sitting here tomorrow, I won’t believe it,’” she said. “Sometimes, the ones I think will go right off, they sit. The ones I kind of feel bad about even taking, they go - boom!

“About the time I think I have people figured out I realize I haven’t got a clue. Maybe that’s the way it should be.”

Gibson usually starts painting after lunch, then keeps busy in the studio until 5 p.m., though she can go longer when she gets into the flow and time slips away.

“And I work probably seven days a week,” she said. “The best days to work are the weekends. Everyone else is doing their thing, so they leave me alone. I can get a whole block of work done. I like the feeling of knowing I can get a lot done.”

Eventually, all of her work comes to an end. She recently finished a portrait of a boat reflecting in the water. She pointed out spots where the underpainting shows through.

A close look reveals a mash-up of ridges, swirls and colors. If the viewer takes a few steps away, light-dappled waves are more fully revealed.

The dual aspect of her work is by design. Gibson often walks back into the hallway to see what’s working and what’s not.

If a painting is completely off track, she’ll paint over it and start again. It’s not common, but finished pieces have left her studio with two other paintings beneath them.

That won’t apply to her recently finished boat on the water. It was a keeper. At least, Gibson was pretty sure.

“Every artist hopes they know when to stop. Sometimes, we stop too early. Sometimes, we don’t stop soon enough,” she said. “For me and this particular piece, I’m happy the way it is and I’m not going to mess with it. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but that’s how it is.”

As a professional painter, Gibson is interested in selling what she creates. As she said, “I like to eat.”

But money is far from her only consideration.

“Can you read it?” she said. “What I love is when someone walks up to one of my pieces and they can’t leave it. That means I did what I set out to do. They’re caught up in it. They’re in the story. They’re following the paint around.”

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Information from: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, https://djournal.com