Instructor Opens the Creative Door for Budding Artists
Under the expert guidance of local art instructor Weldon Oliver the author produced his first painting, 'Moon Glow' in three hours. (Painting and photo by Larry Coonrod)
By Larry Coonrod Of The News-Times
NEWPORT--I've always admired landscape paintings. Wandering around the coast's many galleries, I see amazing canvases and think to myself how great it would be to possess that kind of talent. But, as Dirty Harry famously uttered, "A man's got to know his limitations," and I've known mine include zilch artistic talent - that is until I met Weldon Oliver.
"Learn To Oil Paint" read the advertisement for the Marketplace For The Arts in Newport. "You Can Do It! No Experience Needed!" the flyer promised. "In one three hour class, students can take home a finished oil painting."
Weldon, the art director for the Marketplace For The Arts, assures me anyone can learn to paint, but I'm skeptical. I can't even draw stick figures that aren't insulting to stick figures.
"One of the deep needs of humans is expression . I believe everyone can have a part in art," Oliver says. "I'm putting art in the hands of the public."
At the studio, Weldon hands me a 12-inch by 16-inch wood-backed piece of fiberboard to use as a canvas. He squirts titanium white oil paint on the wax paper that serves as a palette. The great advantage of oil paints he says is that they are slow drying, allowing the artist to pull and mix them after they are on the canvas, and they dry with luminosity.
We'll be painting the moon rising over a lake as the last light of day fades - "Moon Glow." It is one of several settings Oliver uses to teach aspiring artists. Using a broad brush, he instructs me to primer the board with the white while he demonstrates at his own easel. Easy enough, one color, no lines to stay within.
To my surprise and relief, we won't be drawing on the canvas and then painting between the lines. I hear the stick people sighing in relief. We start with the sky by mixing a little red paint with white to make the faint pink of twilight. So far so good. Then a little black mixed with white for the ivory gray of the horizon and some white for the clouds and a dollop of white for the moon. Next a few streaks of blue and a band of gray running across the canvas the distant mountains on the far side of the lake. When I'm obviously not getting it, Weldon patiently holds my hand and leads me through the motion.
He says he too admired art, collected it and even dreamed about doing it. In the early '90s, he took a class for relaxation after being laid off from his computer job in Silicon Valley.
"By the third painting I was hooked," he says. "It took someone to open the door for me. That's what I do now, open the door for people."
In Weldon's painting, I see the lake and the sky. Mine, by contrast, looks more in the realm of Jackson Pollock than a recognizable landscape; or so I think. Using a wide thin fan brush, Weldon shows how to make the vertical strokes that lift the trees out of the black ribbon of paint. Amazing, now I'm seeing the scene. Still, I worry about areas I think I've botched.
"Every good painting has an element of accident in it," Weldon assures me.
"Great," I say. "I must be working on a masterpiece."
In addition to running the studio in Newport, Weldon also heads up the nonprofit Helping Hands for the Arts, Inc, that specializes in art education for children and adults. In Siuslaw, he led 300 third, fourth and fifth-graders through two paintings each. A Herculean task requiring days of prepping boards and collecting paints.
"I was like General Patton organizing for Normandy," he says.
I'm still convinced that after 12 years and thousands of students, I'm going to be his first unteachable 10-thumbed hack. I hope it doesn't break his spirit and make him abandon all his good work.
Picking up the fan brush again we "stipple" in the tree trunks for the foreground. Weldon, in his ever calm and reassuring voice, says I've nailed the mixing of paint to produce subtle shades.
Finally, we're finished. Three hours have flown by. Stepping back from my painting, I'm amazed to see what really looks like a lake at twilight, complete with trees and moonlight reflecting in the water. Real Art.
"The key thing is it lasts. Weeks, months later you can look at it hanging on your wall and say, 'I did that,'" Weldon says.
In the first 24-hours, I practically wear the paint off admiring the first piece of authentic art I've ever created.
The door has been opened.
Reporter Larry Coonrod can be reached at 541-265-8571 ext 211 or larry@newportnewstimes .com.
