Exhibit IV opens with reception

Two Door County artists — oil and cold wax painter Nan Helscher and woodcarver Gary Orthober — pair up with oil painter Steve Langenecker and watercolorist Dannica Walker for Exhibit IV, the final exhibit of Fine Line Design Gallery’s 2013 season.

Helscher said she’d always preferred painting with oil on canvas, and three years ago, she started using cold wax and other media in combination with oils and hard surfaces. What resulted was a new method of “building the paintings up,” using layer after layer to color.

The FIsh Creek resident likes to say that she “sculpts” her paintings, using a variety of materials — palette knives, scrapers, steel wool, even fine paper — to produce her desired results.

Orthober showed an aptitude for woodworking at an early age, but it wasn’t until his retirement in 2003 that he returned to his passion of woodcarving, using a variety of hardwoods, oil painting reproduction, walnut, butternut, maple and birch. He said his goal as a bird carver is to simply carve and paint them as realistically as possible.

“In studying bird anatomy, I’ve found that birds are a lot like humans in that no two are exactly alike in size, color, or personality,” Orthober said. “I like to impose a touch of personality in my birds, whether it’s how they’re posed, how the feathers are fluffed or how I treat the eyes.”

Langenecker began painting at age 9 and has never stopped. Growing up in rural Wisconsin near the Horicon Marsh, he began to paint the fields, woods, and marshes that abounded near his home, with a special focus on the birds and animals that inhabited them. He would be juried into the prestigious Leigh Yawkey Woodson Museum’s international “Birds in Art” exhibit at age 19. Langenecker still paints the landscapes, birds, and animals that once inspired him as a boy.

After studying art in college, Walker went on to pursue a career as a dental ceramist. Returning to painting 20 years later, she believes that the study of faces, essential in cosmetic dentistry, had a great deal of influence on her portrait work.

Doris is mostly a self-taught artist, according to the artist’s statement posted on the Hospital Foundation’s Web Page. She took a few classes from Laverne Benteman and could draw buildings much easier after a few tips. Her first oil painting  was of her great-grandmother when she was 11 years-old.

Doris didn’t do much painting until her children were raised and she didn’t have so much to do on the farm.  For many years, her own children didn’t know their mother could draw and paint, only that she could help them with art projects.

After retiring as an employee of the Linn-Palmer Record, Doris started painting full time. She didn’t have anywhere to paint except at the kitchen table.  She really appreciated having a room just for her artwork after moving to town in 2006.

Watercolor became her first choice and acrylic her second choice of mediums. She felt oil was too messy and smelly for her. Doris enjoys the challenge of drawing and painting what people request. She has painted on several interesting surfaces, such as a bleached dear skull; murals on basement walls; the old laundry mat building in Linn and many cement retaining wall blocks. Many in the community have expressed their appreciation for having their farmsteads, registered cattle, favorite pet, and even babies painted on the blocks used as doorstops.

For a burst of pure color, have a look at Etarae Weinstein's quilt "Key Lime Pie." Its central section is comprised of variously colored horizontal strips of cloth, but what really makes you notice this quilt is a lime green-hued surrounding panel that's as inviting as, well, a key lime pie. Nudged by its prompting title, Weinstein's abstract composition does conjure up a summer dessert.

Most of the other artists in this show are much more overtly realistic in their compositions. Betta Wozniak Fraize has an acrylic painting, "Fun in Baltimore," that is a straightforward depiction of the National Aquarium and other tourist attractions. Little bursts of color are supplied by the bright red paint on the Lightship Chesapeake, which is docked next to the aquarium, and also by the green and blue, dragon-evocative small boats that tourists are using peddle power to operate.

Its depiction of a boy leaning against a badly abraded stucco-coated brick wall qualifies as realism, but a first-floor window in that wall is a dream-worthy aquarium. A turtle and some fish swim within a window frame that's colored a vivid blue, as if this window is an odd aquarium. Visually, the realistic wall and the surreal fish tank window seem like an even greater contrast to each other owing to the near-monochromatic paint treatment used for the wall and the festive colors used for the window.

One of the most appealing works in the show is Ann Horner's oil painting "Antietam." This contemplative depiction of that western Maryland battlefield features four old cannons resting in an otherwise peaceful field. People who have visited Antietam will relate to that mixture of martial and pastoral moods.

Also muted, though in a different sense, is Kathleen Stumpfel's watercolor "Delores." It presents a woman's face as a blend of brown, white and other colors that nearly blend into the similarly colored background. The watercolor medium facilitates this kind of blurring.

Several artists tap into the immediate associations made between certain foods and their coloration. Lisa Coddington's oil painting "My Maryland" is a still-life composition in which cooking pots, spice containers and a single crab definitely set the scene for a meal. That orange-hued crab is not long for this world.

Read the full products at http://artsunlight.com/.