Reasonably Fine Art Talks
We "go live" today, Wednesday, at 1:45 pm Eastern, with watercolorist Gary Tucker
Hi, Friends -
A quick reminder that since I am home for awhile, I’m getting the chance to do the weekly REASONABLY FINE ART TALKS with some regularity. In the past few weeks we’ve talked with watercolorist Robert O’Brien (who lives in my Dad’s old print shop in Weathersfield Center, Vermont - more on that in a second) and Joe Gyurcsak, extraordinary modern impressionist who also is the staff artist for Dick Blick/Utrecht.
This week we are talking with Gary Tucker, another watercolor dude whose work I have loved for several years now. I think I first saw him at Plein Air Easton, but had not had the chance to witness his work being created until this year’s Rattlesnake Gang get-together in Terlingua, Texas this February. The kinetic motion of his brushwork combined with attention to getting his drawing right makes for extremely powerful work.
Just take a gander (not a literal gander, of course; that would leave webbed footprints on the surface) at this piece - it’s of the Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park - that’s the Rio Grande right there; US on the right (pretty appropriate these days) and Mexico to the left. It looks just like this; no - that’s inaccurate. It feels just like this.
Gary and I will be talking today (Wednesday, April 2) at 1:45pm Eastern. You can watch (and comment) live, or, if that doesn’t fit your schedule, rewatch any time in perpetuity using this link to the REASONABLY FINE ART TALKS on YouTube.
I wanted to mention, for a moment, how great I find it to live near where I grew up. I currently live in Bellows Falls, Vermont, 20 miles down the road from the house (to quote the great Cheryl Wheeler, struggling for correct sentence construction) “up in which I grew.” That house, in Weathersfield Center, was built by/for my Great Great Great Grandfather, the Rev. James Converse. “The hired man’s house” was a quarter-mile down the road. When we moved to Vermont in 1969 from Milford, NH, “the hired man’s house” became my dad’s one-man print shop. Today, my in-laws still own it and rent to Rob O’Brien. It absolutely tickled me to be interviewing Rob as he sat in his studio, the very room where my dad used to curse and cajole the Multilith offset press, a King Edward Little Cigar clenched between his teeth.
If learning more about the Hunter family seems like it might be of interest (and it should be, we were/are a delightfully weird family, especially if Emersonian Transcendentalists are your jam), I’d encourage you to subscribe to The Bandana Journal, another Substack with which I am involved. These are the journals of my late -and deeply beloved-sister, Elizabeth. She was a nature writer who lived in the mountains of Western North Carolina, but occasionally she would write about our family- here’s a great essay called “Safely Gathered In.” In any case, if you subscribe (and it is totally free), aside from the Hunter family, you’ll learn a lot about monarch butterflies, spiders, praying mantises, and her garden. Also rocks.
Lastly, thanks so much for being a part of this Substack, aka newsletter. We switched over from MailChimp last year, and I have to say, I really prefer almost everything about this new format. It allows easy dialog between me and you folks reading it; things are formatted simply and attractively (with MailChimp one would spend six hours creating an emailer and -no matter what- it would end up looking like a fundraising solicitation from a small-city hospital; not that there is anything wrong with small-city hospitals); and those who wish to can become paid subscribers (in return they are offered a hugely discounted Charle Hunter original each month - and all proceeds - from the paintings to the revenue generated by “subscriptions” go to various charities; local projects I’m involved in, gentle sea-cows, National Parks, supporting democracy and independent journalism, etc.
You take good care, and we will see you down the road (or over on YouTube).
Your pal,
~Charlie
PS: Don’t forget to celebrate democracy on Saturday, April 5!