Artist Biography: Nancy Reid Gunn (July 9, June 23, 2007) Stylish and eloquent, artist Nancy Reid Gunn was the golden girl of the Tallahassee,

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1 Artist Biography: Nancy Reid Gunn (July 9, June 23, 2007) Stylish and eloquent, artist Nancy Reid Gunn was the golden girl of the Tallahassee, Florida, art scene in the 1960s and 1970s. 1 Born in Fort Worth, Texas, on July 9, 1922, Gunn took her first art class at age seventeen. Her father was an engineer whose career path took the family to Connellsville, Pennsylvania, and Evanston, Illinois. 2 Nancy Reid attended Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, where she met her future husband James Gunn. She continued her studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1948, James and Nancy married and moved to Tallahassee, Florida. A musician, James had secured his first teaching job in the Music Department at Florida State University. When they first moved to the area, the trajectory of Nancy s career was not entirely clear. She was dissatisfied with her work in Tallahassee her small art studio and an advertising job at a local newspaper. 3 One day, Gunn happened to see a student exhibit of Karl Zerbe s classes at Florida State. Impressed, she knew she wanted to work with the German expressionist painter. Making a leap of faith, she closed her studio and studied with Zerbe from Zerbe introduced Gunn to the hot wax painting technique which would dominate her work for the rest of her life: encaustics. This centuries-old method involves painting with hot melted wax mixed with pigment. Even though an allergy forced Zerbe to give up the encaustic technique before he came to Tallahassee, he did at least one demonstration for his students at Florida State. Put off by the blowtorch Zerbe used in the method, Gunn originally had no interest in using the encaustic process. However, Zerbe asked Gunn to give a demonstration of a technique using crayon. Unable to build up the layers of crayon to the desired thickness, Gunn melted the crayons on her stove and brushed them on the surface. Thus began her use of hot 1

2 wax. Avoiding the blow torch, Gunn developed her own method of creating encaustics using the tools she had at hand. At first, she attached a small space heater to a broom handle to burn in (set) the painting, rather than a blow torch. She also heated the wax using an electric skillet. 4 Encaustic painting became her favored technique. Discussing her creative process, Gunn explained that she preferred to keep her options open when it came to the subject matter of her work: My paintings begin abstractly with purely painterly problems, postponing image and symbol until the work is fairly well developed as a painting. When an image breaks in on this total abstraction, I must decide whether it fits both visually and emotionally the environment of the particular painting. If it does not, I destroy the image, knowing that it will appear in a more suitable, later work. 5 Gunn was not afraid to destroy her art; she was confident that if an idea or an image were truly useful, it would come back to her. She did not try to force things that simply did not work together in a particular piece. A popular local artist, Gunn was asked to lend her talent for many unique projects. In the late 1960s, she participated in a special project to promote Florida tourism. Mary Lou Norwood spearheaded the project with The Florida Development Commission, the travel promotion agency of the state. The state tourism agency commissioned four female artists, including Gunn, to float down the Kissimmee River Valley Chain of Lakes on a houseboat, capturing what inspired them along the way. According to Norwood, the Development Commission wanted to focus on the lakes of central Florida; they hoped that sending a handful of Florida artists on a river cruise would produce various types of beautiful results which could be used to promote Florida travel. 6 The LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts exhibited the river-inspired artwork in the spring of

3 Projects such as this required Gunn to spend time away from her family. She credited her husband with making it possible for her to be a mother, wife, and professional artist at the same time. 7 James Gunn helped care for their daughter and did some of the cooking, often baking bread for the family. A newspaper article quoted Nancy Gunn on motherhood and her career: [I]t really does all depend on Jimmy.He takes a much greater part in Remi s life than most fathers seem to with their children. 8 Asked about the matter, James felt that his experience as a fellow artist a musician made him more supportive and understanding of her career as an artist. James owned a helicopter, and they often spent time together as a family going out on excursions. Besides making time for family, Gunn also gave her time and talent to the LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts. Gunn drew crowds as she did portrait sketches at LeMoyne events and local festivals. 9 Curious, excited children would gravitate towards her, leaning on her as they watched her draw. Many people took advantage of the opportunity, as the price was low, and proceeds benefited LeMoyne. As a Tallahassee Democrat writer noted, Certainly, Gunn was the golden girl of the Tallahassee arts scene in the 60s and 70s. She was tall and slim, beautiful with a mellifluous voice, talented and successful. 10 Many people often commented that Gunn had a way with words. On her verbose nature, Gunn explained that she grew up in a family that loved words. 11 She used this gift to help LeMoyne in a 1997 letter of support for the organization to receive state funding. Gunn asserted that LeMoyne had made a difference in Tallahassee, bringing fine art to the attention of the community, and bringing local artists to the attention of even wider circles. I was one of the artists who signed LeMoyne s charter, Gunn asserted, but had I not been an artist I would support LeMoyne as a citizen. 12 3

4 An articulate speaker and elegant writer, Gunn distilled her philosophy on the purpose of art into a few concise, yet complex ideas. Art is needed to express that part of human nature which cannot be defined in words. Religions through the ages used art not merely to illustrate the holy events but to awaken the people s intuitive understanding of the ineffable. 13 Gunn preferred to leave her paintings open to interpretation; each viewer comes away with a different meaning for a painting because they each have a different point of view based on their own life experiences. In the late 1990s, Gunn began to lose her eyesight and her husband passed away; still, she remained active, cementing her reputation among friends as an optimistic adviser and confidant. 14 In 1997, the LeMoyne hosted a retrospective of Gunn s work. Besides allowing the public to see Gunn s work, the LeMoyne put on the exhibit so that Gunn could see and remember her paintings before losing her sight. 15 Gunn passed away in June of 2007, but her memory lives on through her artwork in the LeMoyne Permanent Collection. By Kathaleen Boche Department of History Florida State University 1 Beverly Clifford, Artist Discusses Dialogues, Tallahassee Democrat, Feb 2, 1997, 10F. 2 Beverly Clifford, Artist Discusses Dialogues, Tallahassee Democrat, Feb 2, 1997, 10F. 3 A.R. Smith, Enjoy the Striking Beauty of Encaustic Art, Florida Flambeau, Jan. 16, 1997, 6. 4 Ann Waldron, Tallahassee s Nancy Reid Gunn A New Artist and an Old Art, St. Petersberg Times, Nov. 8, 1964, Nancy Reid Gunn File, LeMoyne Records. 5 Two Artist Two, exhibit advertisement, LeMoyne Art Foundation, October 1978, Nancy Reid Gunn File, LeMoyne Records. 6 Mary Lou Norwood, Artists Afloat, brochure advertisement, LeMoyne Art Foundation, April Lacy Bullard, Artistic Mother Needs Understanding Husband, Tallahassee Democrat, May 8, 1966, n.p. 8 Lacy Bullard, Artistic Mother Needs Understanding Husband, Tallahassee Democrat, May 8, 1966, n.p. 9 Beverly Clifford, Artist Discusses Dialogues, Tallahassee Democrat, Feb 2, 1997, 10F. 10 Beverly Clifford, Artist Discusses Dialogues, Tallahassee Democrat, Feb 2, 1997, 10F. 11 Beverly Clifford, Artist Discusses Dialogues, Tallahassee Democrat, Feb 2, 1997, 10F. 12 Nancy Reid Gunn, letter to the Visual Arts Review Panel, Florida Arts Council, February 7, 1997, Nancy Reid Gunn File, LeMoyne Records. 4

5 13 Two Artist Two, exhibit advertisement, LeMoyne Art Foundation, October 1978, Nancy Reid Gunn File, LeMoyne Records. 14 Gerald Ensley, Famed artist Gunn, 84, dies, Tallahassee Democrat, July 3, 2007, A Year Celebration: The 40 th Anniversay of LeMoyne, booklet, Le Moyne Art Foundation,

WRAC News. January 2018

WRAC News. January 2018 WRAC NEWS 2018 Issue 1 WRAC News January 2018 WRAC FEATURED ARTIST OF THE MONTH, RICHARD CLINE. For this month, the Winnipeg River Arts Council features visual artist, Richard Cline. Throughout his life,