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April 2016
Interview Gay Scheibl Tucson |
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Gay Scheibl_Self-Portrait_
Gay Scheibl is an award-winning Tucson artist known for her gorgeous landscape paintings. Many of her landscapes were created plein air, a French term meaning out in the open air. Although Gay primarily paints landscapes, she also has produced a noteworthy collection of portraits, both of people and of animals. She is active in the Tucson Plein Air Painters Society, Tucson Pastel Society, and Plein Air painters of NM and Black Range Artists, Inc. of NM.
SAN: Gay, your life in a military family took you to live in many places in the world. You began your art education at Escuella de Bellas Artes, Seville, Spain. Do you think this early peripatetic lifestyle influenced you as an artist? If so, how? And how did you come to settle in southern Arizona?
Gay Scheibl: By the time I arrived in Seville at the age of 19, I had already lived in two countries other than the U.S.A. I had lived in five states and moved more than 10 times. English was my second language. Right after I was born my father was rotated to Madrid, Spain. My parents elected to live in the city and enter us kids into the local school system.
I remember drawing and coloring at the age of four, because I spent most of my time alone. I was exposed to amazing things as a child and at the same time was ripped away from many things. Drawing and coloring helped me keep my memories of pets and places. When I was 16, old enough to go to work and prior to any formal art training, I was hired by a company to do detailed pen and ink wildlife drawings to make into silkscreens to reproduce onto barrel heads. At 17, I painted my first painting. It was a close up of a rose, and I entered it into a contest at the Academy of Arts in our current town of Easton, MD. I won first place and was awarded a college book scholarship.
After graduating from college from Frostburg State University I got the bug to move back to Montana. I met my husband there and stayed for 22 years, with a couple of moves to Colorado and Washington state. Those years I was involved with printing and publishing. One day we decided we were at an age that we had to do something other than what we were doing to secure ourselves a retirement. I had only 10 years in working as a mapper for the Dept. of Transportation with the state of Montana. There was little retirement to look forward to. Fortunately, we had saved and invested knowing that this would likely happen. We decided to give up the snow and move south. My husband had journeyed through Arizona in his youth and so we decided to move to Tucson. We bought a small retail business selling replacement parts for mobile homes and settled right in.
It was then that I wanted to get back into fine art and leave commercial art behind. I took a couple of drawing classes at The Drawing Studio, in Tucson. I was hooked! I took a couple of painting classes then portrait classes. Then I left and studied with portrait artist, Russ Recchion to paint portraits for 6 months. Then I studied with landscape artist, Phil Starke for three months. After 10 years we sold our store and retired giving me the time to travel about and paint.
SAN: Gay, your life in a military family took you to live in many places in the world. You began your art education at Escuella de Bellas Artes, Seville, Spain. Do you think this early peripatetic lifestyle influenced you as an artist? If so, how? And how did you come to settle in southern Arizona?
Gay Scheibl: By the time I arrived in Seville at the age of 19, I had already lived in two countries other than the U.S.A. I had lived in five states and moved more than 10 times. English was my second language. Right after I was born my father was rotated to Madrid, Spain. My parents elected to live in the city and enter us kids into the local school system.
I remember drawing and coloring at the age of four, because I spent most of my time alone. I was exposed to amazing things as a child and at the same time was ripped away from many things. Drawing and coloring helped me keep my memories of pets and places. When I was 16, old enough to go to work and prior to any formal art training, I was hired by a company to do detailed pen and ink wildlife drawings to make into silkscreens to reproduce onto barrel heads. At 17, I painted my first painting. It was a close up of a rose, and I entered it into a contest at the Academy of Arts in our current town of Easton, MD. I won first place and was awarded a college book scholarship.
After graduating from college from Frostburg State University I got the bug to move back to Montana. I met my husband there and stayed for 22 years, with a couple of moves to Colorado and Washington state. Those years I was involved with printing and publishing. One day we decided we were at an age that we had to do something other than what we were doing to secure ourselves a retirement. I had only 10 years in working as a mapper for the Dept. of Transportation with the state of Montana. There was little retirement to look forward to. Fortunately, we had saved and invested knowing that this would likely happen. We decided to give up the snow and move south. My husband had journeyed through Arizona in his youth and so we decided to move to Tucson. We bought a small retail business selling replacement parts for mobile homes and settled right in.
It was then that I wanted to get back into fine art and leave commercial art behind. I took a couple of drawing classes at The Drawing Studio, in Tucson. I was hooked! I took a couple of painting classes then portrait classes. Then I left and studied with portrait artist, Russ Recchion to paint portraits for 6 months. Then I studied with landscape artist, Phil Starke for three months. After 10 years we sold our store and retired giving me the time to travel about and paint.
GScheibl_Springtime_
SAN: Your landscapes indicate that you’ve traveled and painted throughout the American Southwest in both mountainous and desert areas. Do you have a favorite place you like to paint in this part of the world?
GS: I enjoy traveling, it’s in my blood. Now that I paint, traveling has become even more fun. When I reflect on my travels and have the little paintings to look at I remember so much more about my experiences. I remember the weather, the noises, the people I met and all the things that I focused on for my 2-3 hour session studying my subject. It’s like a photo in 5 dimensions. As far as favorites places…. Hmmmm….. I am currently in love with the Mimbres Valley in New Mexico. I do have to say though, I return often to Agua Caliente Park to paint the beautiful water and palm trees. It’s all beautiful and what isn’t when you get there always turns out to be by the time you leave.
GS: I enjoy traveling, it’s in my blood. Now that I paint, traveling has become even more fun. When I reflect on my travels and have the little paintings to look at I remember so much more about my experiences. I remember the weather, the noises, the people I met and all the things that I focused on for my 2-3 hour session studying my subject. It’s like a photo in 5 dimensions. As far as favorites places…. Hmmmm….. I am currently in love with the Mimbres Valley in New Mexico. I do have to say though, I return often to Agua Caliente Park to paint the beautiful water and palm trees. It’s all beautiful and what isn’t when you get there always turns out to be by the time you leave.
GScheibl_Long-Needled Barrel_
SAN: You work both in oil and soft pastel. Which medium is best for which subject matter in your opinion?
GS: Oil paint was my first love. I found that it was a great accomplishment to do a painting that wasn’t 100% mud. Mixing oils can be tricky and frustrating. Over time and lots of practice I got really good at it. I am still amazed at the millions of different colors you can create with four tubes of paint. Later, I joined the Tucson Pastel Society and thought it might be good to try pastels. Every color under the sun is available in a stick of pastel. There are ways to mix those too, but you don’t often need to if you own enough of them.
In my opinion I love the buttery softness of oils for portrait work and the way it glides over the canvas. With certain brush manipulations you can move the paint around to capture just the right line. It is beautiful in the ease of color gradation in skin tones and the transparency in the eyes. Mixing with mediums can make it loose like watercolor or leave dry to drag over other colors allowing them to show through. It can be a ballet of color and texture. There is no limit to the amount of paint you can apply to the canvas that can play with the values and creates great 3-dimensional affects.
Pastels, I like for still lives with florals. They are ideal for painting glass and back lit petals. The colors can be so vibrant. The affect of the chalky lines can give a painting so much energy. Pastels are also great for landscapes. They are ideal for a broken color affect to achieve great vibrancy.
GS: Oil paint was my first love. I found that it was a great accomplishment to do a painting that wasn’t 100% mud. Mixing oils can be tricky and frustrating. Over time and lots of practice I got really good at it. I am still amazed at the millions of different colors you can create with four tubes of paint. Later, I joined the Tucson Pastel Society and thought it might be good to try pastels. Every color under the sun is available in a stick of pastel. There are ways to mix those too, but you don’t often need to if you own enough of them.
In my opinion I love the buttery softness of oils for portrait work and the way it glides over the canvas. With certain brush manipulations you can move the paint around to capture just the right line. It is beautiful in the ease of color gradation in skin tones and the transparency in the eyes. Mixing with mediums can make it loose like watercolor or leave dry to drag over other colors allowing them to show through. It can be a ballet of color and texture. There is no limit to the amount of paint you can apply to the canvas that can play with the values and creates great 3-dimensional affects.
Pastels, I like for still lives with florals. They are ideal for painting glass and back lit petals. The colors can be so vibrant. The affect of the chalky lines can give a painting so much energy. Pastels are also great for landscapes. They are ideal for a broken color affect to achieve great vibrancy.
GScheibl_Milepost 10_
SAN: What is it about plein air painting that attracts you?
GS: Plein air has its rites of passage, you can’t just do it. You have to want it and learn it and practice it, often. I like to quote my artist friend Meredith Milstead, “Plein air, you have to be there.” All of you has to be there, your body, your mind your enthusiasm and your stuff. Each day is a grand accomplishment whether you finish a painting or not. Many paint-outs are chalked up to learning. That’s very important. It’s not easy. The more it’s done the easier it gets. I have become adaptable to any situation and can get creative with the tools I bring which aren’t always the right ones. I have learned to appreciate this planet and all that’s in it so much more since I started plein air. It’s like being a translator between earth and art. I get to capture the vanishing landscapes and interpret them into poetry of my own invention. I have also made the best friends through plein air. I finally have something in common.
GS: Plein air has its rites of passage, you can’t just do it. You have to want it and learn it and practice it, often. I like to quote my artist friend Meredith Milstead, “Plein air, you have to be there.” All of you has to be there, your body, your mind your enthusiasm and your stuff. Each day is a grand accomplishment whether you finish a painting or not. Many paint-outs are chalked up to learning. That’s very important. It’s not easy. The more it’s done the easier it gets. I have become adaptable to any situation and can get creative with the tools I bring which aren’t always the right ones. I have learned to appreciate this planet and all that’s in it so much more since I started plein air. It’s like being a translator between earth and art. I get to capture the vanishing landscapes and interpret them into poetry of my own invention. I have also made the best friends through plein air. I finally have something in common.
GScheibl_Airstream_
SAN: What is the most challenging aspect of plein air painting?
GS: Plein air painting is an activity unlike any other. If a plein air painter can paint every time without some sort of challenge then he/she is not authentically painting the en plein air spirit. My first experience painting out in nature was with a watercolor class offered by The Drawing Studio. I was so excited to see what this was all about and followed the teacher’s instructions to the letter to prepare for the morning. I never have been good with instructions. I arrived at the location and met up with everyone and we all spread out to the four winds. I brought everything I thought I needed. I walked in search of the perfect scene (that would easily hang in any gallery) dragging my folding chair and table, a full set of paints, hat, water, lunch, bug spray, all my brushes and, well needless to say, too much stuff. I set up and sat there musing about perhaps taking a nap with all the stuff I must have brought a cot too. I was exhausted and dripping sweat and the temperature was climbing. Then I realized that I didn’t know very much about watercolor. There I sat, frustrated and tired. I did manage to scribble a lake scene with a duck.
Every subsequent paint-out I scaled down on tools and eventually created a ‘plein air kit’ suited to my particular needs. Sigh, plein air got so much easier. The challenges will always exist, but will change along the way. Erecting a French easel is a challenge. It can mean too windy and watching your canvas cartwheel down the canyon. It can mean a gnat hatch, chatty tourists or curious animals that make you stop to assess if you should run for it or let them inspect your things. Really, it’s the challenges that make an artist grow and the experiences that make plein air so much fun to do. There is always a story.
GS: Plein air painting is an activity unlike any other. If a plein air painter can paint every time without some sort of challenge then he/she is not authentically painting the en plein air spirit. My first experience painting out in nature was with a watercolor class offered by The Drawing Studio. I was so excited to see what this was all about and followed the teacher’s instructions to the letter to prepare for the morning. I never have been good with instructions. I arrived at the location and met up with everyone and we all spread out to the four winds. I brought everything I thought I needed. I walked in search of the perfect scene (that would easily hang in any gallery) dragging my folding chair and table, a full set of paints, hat, water, lunch, bug spray, all my brushes and, well needless to say, too much stuff. I set up and sat there musing about perhaps taking a nap with all the stuff I must have brought a cot too. I was exhausted and dripping sweat and the temperature was climbing. Then I realized that I didn’t know very much about watercolor. There I sat, frustrated and tired. I did manage to scribble a lake scene with a duck.
Every subsequent paint-out I scaled down on tools and eventually created a ‘plein air kit’ suited to my particular needs. Sigh, plein air got so much easier. The challenges will always exist, but will change along the way. Erecting a French easel is a challenge. It can mean too windy and watching your canvas cartwheel down the canyon. It can mean a gnat hatch, chatty tourists or curious animals that make you stop to assess if you should run for it or let them inspect your things. Really, it’s the challenges that make an artist grow and the experiences that make plein air so much fun to do. There is always a story.
Gay Scheibl at Carmel River, CA
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Gay Scheibl at Molino Basin, AZ
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Gay Scheibl at Sabino Canyon, AZ
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SAN: Do you usually paint plein air with a group of artists or do you like solitude when you are working?
GS: Artists, in my opinion are usually a lonely lot, too many hours working in the studio alone. Plein air to me is an occasion to paint with someone and share ideas. I enjoy painting with the societies that I join. At the end of the session we usually gather and show our creations and have a critique. We are like border collies in a way. When we are all together we are focused on the event not on each other. I prefer to paint with one other person usually. With one, the day becomes uncomplicated and productive. There is also more safety with two. Solitude is a mental state. It comes when I get into the ‘zone’ experiencing and painting the world around me. I have found that I leave the linear world and enter the dream state where seemingly mundane life and objects become so astoundingly beautiful.
GS: Artists, in my opinion are usually a lonely lot, too many hours working in the studio alone. Plein air to me is an occasion to paint with someone and share ideas. I enjoy painting with the societies that I join. At the end of the session we usually gather and show our creations and have a critique. We are like border collies in a way. When we are all together we are focused on the event not on each other. I prefer to paint with one other person usually. With one, the day becomes uncomplicated and productive. There is also more safety with two. Solitude is a mental state. It comes when I get into the ‘zone’ experiencing and painting the world around me. I have found that I leave the linear world and enter the dream state where seemingly mundane life and objects become so astoundingly beautiful.
GScheibl_Cowboy Ed_
SAN: Painting portraits of people must be quite a different experience than working on landscapes. What kinds of adjustments do you have to make to paint portraits?
GS: Portraiture is not very different than landscapes when you begin. Landscape painting is a combination of composition, color harmony, temperature, value and focal point and a few other things. What I see out in the field in the small window of time when the light is right must be sketched and planned to create an imaginative expression including reducing the elements, enhancing the light, manipulating the brushwork, measuring and managing the tone. When I create a portrait, using all the same rules, the subject becomes the landscape with the curves, the skin tone, shadows and the light that bounces and defines the figure. The benefits of that over landscape is that if it looks right it surely must be. The point of launch that separates the two is when the figure must take on character and emotion. It must literally appear to take a breath. It should appear weightless and momentary. It must have thought and liquidity in its eyes and most of all, it’s not finished until the eyes look back.
GS: Portraiture is not very different than landscapes when you begin. Landscape painting is a combination of composition, color harmony, temperature, value and focal point and a few other things. What I see out in the field in the small window of time when the light is right must be sketched and planned to create an imaginative expression including reducing the elements, enhancing the light, manipulating the brushwork, measuring and managing the tone. When I create a portrait, using all the same rules, the subject becomes the landscape with the curves, the skin tone, shadows and the light that bounces and defines the figure. The benefits of that over landscape is that if it looks right it surely must be. The point of launch that separates the two is when the figure must take on character and emotion. It must literally appear to take a breath. It should appear weightless and momentary. It must have thought and liquidity in its eyes and most of all, it’s not finished until the eyes look back.
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SAN: One of your longstanding interests is animal welfare. Your connection to animals probably explains the living conscious presence we see in the eyes of your animal portraits. Those black labs convey a lot in their eyes!
GS: Thank you, I have had a dog by my side for my entire life. When I was 7 my father rotated to Great Falls, MT. It only seemed right that the family should acquire a couple of horses. My eldest sister and I took great interest in them and rode them every chance we had. That was when I knew that I had a strong attachment to animals. Just being with the horses and dogs gave me a fulfillment that I didn’t get from people. I felt whole in their company. I would spend hours with them, talking to them and looking into their soulful eyes, a closeness I never experienced with people. When I paint pets, I want to feel the goosies when I look into their gaze and expect their nose to quiver. SAN: Do you have any special art-related plans for the future? Painting the California seacoast or the streets of Shanghai? GS: This fall a friend and I plan to fly to New England and paint the changing foliage and quaint architecture for a week. This will be quite the switch on subject matter. The palette will be very different than the southwest. I look forward to a week packed full of adventure, exploring, possible danger, giggling and making friends of strangers. |
GScheibl_Red_
GScheibl_Sweet Dreams_
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GScheibl_Best in Show, Grant Co. Fair, New Mexico
SAN: Do you ever teach classes? If so, where?
GS: I haven’t taught classes in painting. There will come a time that I will be ready to share all that I have and teach, but for now I am still learning.
SAN: Here’s a question which I ask all artists. What do you think would make life better for artists in southern Arizona?
GS: I don’t have any opinion on any specific issues. I can only say that I have been very happy with my life in southern Arizona as an artist. The learning opportunities here are seemingly endless and available to everyone. I feel blessed that I was so fortunate to have lived here.
GS: I haven’t taught classes in painting. There will come a time that I will be ready to share all that I have and teach, but for now I am still learning.
SAN: Here’s a question which I ask all artists. What do you think would make life better for artists in southern Arizona?
GS: I don’t have any opinion on any specific issues. I can only say that I have been very happy with my life in southern Arizona as an artist. The learning opportunities here are seemingly endless and available to everyone. I feel blessed that I was so fortunate to have lived here.
Gay Scheibl and Plein Air Pete
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For more of Gay Scheibl's artwork, go to http://www.gayscheiblart.com/
Gay Scheibl at Asilomar Beach, CA
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