D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
June 2008
Beyond the Patio
Las Cruces artist Julie Ford Oliver closes her beloved gallery and looks forward to what's next.
By Donna Clayton Lawder
Julie Ford Oliver still remembers her surprise, years ago, at finding one of her paintings hanging in an office. In this case, she says, it was a rather unpleasant surprise.
 |
Julie Ford Oliver with some of her
work, on display at Patio Art Gallery, which she co-owns. (Photo by Donna
Clayton Lawder) |
"Well, I'd thrown that painting away, you see," she says, an English accent from her girlhood in Manchester still creeping in around the edges. "We were living in a high-rise apartment building and I'd put some of my 'bad' paintings, the ones I didn't think worth keeping, down in the trash.
"So, here I am, some time later, and I'm passing by the maintenance guy's office and there's my painting!" She pauses to laugh at the memory.
"This is one thing about art — not everything is precious. You have to get rid of the 'bad' ones," she says. "After that experience, I really destroy them now. Oh, it gives my poor husband a heart attack every time I do it. But never again do I want to see one of my 'bad' ones showing up on a wall somewhere!"
These days, Oliver is letting go of not only "the bad ones," but something good as well. The Patio Art Gallery she has owned and operated in Las Cruces with fellow artist Carolyn Bunch for the past five years will close at the end of this month.
"We've helped a lot of artists get recognized, and we have sold a lot of work. Oh, it's work, all right," she says of owning and running a gallery. "But it's also been a blast."
She walks around the airy and inviting gallery space, which features many of her own paintings — including the cover of this month's Desert Exposure. But Oliver points out the works of the other artists currently on exhibit: luminous, bold sculptures by Dan Tapper, shimmering silks by Judy Licht, portraits by Carolyn Bunch.
"Look at that face!" she says, shaking her head admiringly at one of Bunch's paintings, a Native American girl.
Educated at the Manchester School of Art in England, Oliver had a successful career in illustrating.
"Well, you can't get a good job in the arts straight off, you know," she says. She recounts some of the work she did, perfecting photos, mainly for catalogs. "Painting in and embellishing the lace on the bras and blouses, taking corns off the models' feet. Oh, I'm not kidding!" she adds with a laugh.
After coming to the States and working as an illustrator for a large Detroit firm in the early 1960s, she and her husband then lived and worked in El Paso. That's where Oliver established herself as a fine artist, before coming to Las Cruces seven years ago and starting the Patio Gallery soon after.
Now that the gallery is closing, Oliver says she'll continue teaching weekly art classes. "I have a waiting list!" she says brightly. She also will be able to spend more time painting, selling her work through the Patio Art Gallery Web site, which will continue (www.patioartgallery.com)
Oliver works in a variety of media — watercolor, oils, acrylics and egg tempera. She says oil is her favorite because of "the lusciousness of color and how forgiving it is to work in."
She chooses which medium to use in a given painting based on the subject matter. Of her paintings currently in the gallery, she points out a landscape, "Juarez," done in watercolor. "I couldn't capture that scene in oils," she says. "There was a translucence to what I saw that day in the quality of the light that I knew only watercolor would convey."
As for subject matter, most of her work hanging in the gallery is landscape or still life. "Oh, I'm passionate about still life!" she exclaims. "I see everything in my head before I paint it. I lie in bed and move the items around in my head until I have them where I want them."
She points out "Flowers from a Friend," a still life painting of a dish, an apple, a jar that looks like it is filled with jam, and a ceramic vase holding a brilliant bouquet of blooms. A series of four smaller still lifes, painted on wood instead of canvas, shows various groupings of pitchers, teacups, vases and fruits.
"I love painting textiles and glass," she says. "Also, fabrics. Oh, and yes, porcelain." She admits that part of her love of teapots may come from her life in England. "But I love the Southwest," she puts in. "Then again, I do not have a Southwest home. But neither is it an English home!"
What her home is, she allows, is a source of inspiration and subject matter. She points out "Pouncer and the Birds," this month's Desert Exposure cover, a painting of a black-and-white cat looking out a doorway at birds on the ground.
"That's my driveway," she says with a smile.
Another landscape, showing the view from her studio window, is the subject of "Mesilla Valley Sunrise." In it, clouds glow rosy over the Organ Mountains and are reflected in the Rio Grande below.
"That's the only vantage point from which you can see the entire 'S' of the river," Oliver says, adding that she's painted this particular scene — this exact scene, in fact — 12 times now, as commissions. "It's a very popular image, and so I've painted it over and over for people," she says, showing a greeting card she has of the image. "It's a good thing it's so beautiful and I love it!"
Oliver says she's done a fair amount of commission work, including a version of the cat painting she currently is working on.
"The woman who has commissioned it has this 19-year-old cat, so I am painting that cat into this scene," she explains. "And that cat loves fish, so I am painting a pond with fish into the picture instead of the birds you see here in the driveway."
Oliver says that before she opened the gallery with Bunch, she painted more portraits, and that she enjoys capturing faces on canvas. With portraiture being well represented through Bunch's work, though, Oliver has stayed mostly with landscapes and her beloved still-life subjects.
"You have to consider the whole gallery, the mix of the kinds of work you have," she says. "I used to paint people a lot, but in the last five years I've been doing other things. But without the gallery, now, I'm looking forward to going back to that a bit."
The Patio Art Gallery will remain open Tuesdays through Saturdays, through June 29, with work by Julie Ford Oliver and 10 other artists. 665 E. University Ave., Bldg. 2, Suite A, in the Hadley Centre. 541-7401, 532-9567. www.patioartgallery.com