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Creativity Q+A with Hank Feeley

Well into his career as an advertising executive, Hank Feeley, 84, wondered if he’d taken the wrong fork in the road. Wonder led to action: He hung up his business suit and enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A painting hobby became a professional practice. Making, he said, is “what human beings are supposed to do.”

This interview was conducted in April 2025 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Hank Feeley


Describe the medium in which you work. What is your work?

I’m mainly a painter: 60% oil, 20% acrylic. The rest, watercolor and pastel. I also sculpt, but not much these days. I used to do a lot casting in bronze and lead crystal when I was in Chicago, but I’m not there anymore, not close to the foundries. What I’ve been doing [instead] is using Sculpy. You don’t need a foundry, but an oven to bake it.

When you decide you want to work in sculpture, what’s the thing the thing that says to you, “This needs to be a sculpture.”

I don’t think of it that way. I’m painting, painting, painting, and then I’m having down time, and I think I haven’t done a lot of sculpture recently, so I take it up. It’s almost on a whim. Painting is my main business. So I take it as a break, an interruption, a change. Something to stimulate a different part of the brain.

Did you receive any formal training in visual art? 

When I was 2 or 3 years old, I had some cousins who would babysit me. They went on to become successful commercial artists. They got me interested in art. I wouldn’t call it “formal” training, but they began the process in my life. I became a pretty good painter in my teenage and college years. Then, I figured I’d make that a career, so I went into the advertising business with the idea of being an art director. Somebody was making three times what I was making down in the research department. I went down there, interviewed, and ended up working for 30 years on the business side [of advertising with the corporation Leo Burnett], not the creative [side], not being an artist but around a lot of artists. It always bothered me that maybe I’d taken the wrong fork in the road. I did art while I was in the advertising business, but it was a hobby. I got to a point where I decided — financially and otherwise — that I could take the fork I didn’t take originally. My office was across the street from the Art Institute of Chicago. I started taking classes (1993-1995). Eventually, I quit my business and went full-time. I got a BFA in studio art, and one in art history.

How did your formal training affect your development as a creative practitioner?

It changed everything. I always painted and drew, because I could. I didn’t ever think about art history, what other people did. When I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago [SAIC], I took a lot of art history, which really changed everything for me. It was a revelation — seeing what other people had done and understanding why they did it. For instance: I never liked Picasso. I didn’t understand him. After art history, understanding these artists, what they were trying to do, and the groundbreaking innovation and creativity — it changed everything for me. It changed my art. The other thing is the students I was going to school with were younger than my own kids: wide open, creative, experimental people. The SAIC really didn’t want to train a watercolor painter like me. They wanted to train the next Picasso. These creative kids influenced me a lot. So, I started experimenting a lot, tried to stretch the envelope.

You have two studios. One in Northern Michigan, and one in Florida.

The one in Florida is a second-floor, storefront operation, about 800 square feet. It’s a good space. I designed the one in Michigan — I’m a frustrated architect. It’s a cool place. I love being there. It’s built like a barn. It’s heavy-timber construction that old barns were made from. The doors open to the outside. Also, I use it as a storage space. Right now my boat and my cars are in there. It’s my home base.

What themes/ideas are the focus of your work?

A painting from the Red Dress series.

I started out doing themes; back in those days, it was music. I always play jazz when I’m painting, and I started painting with the music, and got musically-looking kind of work. I did that for while, and then I moved into something called The Red Dress: I did about 40 paintings [in which] a red dress was involved. Then I got into things based on the information age.

Years ago, when I was [still in the advertising business], we went to Venezuela. They had had a monsoon, and it had wiped out all these indigenous people who lived in the mountains. They had no electricity, no water, nothing. When we went there [with medicine and food], we observed one group of people who [had pirated] electricity from the government lines along the road. They were watching, on little rabbit-ears TV, Dallas. It was a paradox. It was like, What’s going on here?  People who have nothing and are starving and have no water, are watching a television show about the most affluent people in America. It stunned me. Years later, it occurred to me, in the age of technology, that people around the world see things that are totally incongruous, different to what their lives are. I made a bunch of paintings about it. I still do that if an issue comes up. I make the contrast between my life, and what’s happening in the rest of the world. It was a theme that gripped me, but you run out of steam. You do 60 of these paintings in a row, and you decide that you’ve done it. At that point I decided that I wouldn’t have themes anymore. I’d just get away from themes and just dream. That’s mostly what I do now. And, the way I achieve that: Over many years, I’m an inveterate collector of images. I have 14 boxes of images that I’ve pulled out of newspapers, or sketches I’ve made, or photographs. They catch my eye; I don’t know what I’m going to do with them, so I just throw them into the box. If I’m looking for an idea, I sit down and go through the box. These images were isolated when I first picked them out, but now they’ve gotten shuffled with other images, and I look at them in a different light. That becomes the spark, the new idea.

In so many of your paintings, there are symbols and images and icons and people scattered throughout the composition. It’s surreal. They don’t, at first glance, seem to be related to one another.

To The River [Ode To Edgar Allen Poe], oil on canvas, 56″ h x 44″ w, 2024, Hank Feeley
I put them together because they look interesting together and make an interesting composition. And, it’s pleasing to me. When people look at them, it causes people to think: What’s going on here? It stimulates their curiosity. People always ask me for an explanation. There is no explanation. I put together these things that I like.

What’s your favorite tool?

I’m a painter. It’s brushes, obviously.

Do you use a sketchbook? Work journal?

I occasionally do some sketching. [Mostly,] I put things together in my mind. I have some beginning ideas. Sometimes I sketch things out. Like a figure. I want to sketch out the figure before I do it, to get it accurate. Believe me, I don’t know what the painting is going to be  once it starts. I keep manipulating it until I don’t know what else to do.

This would stand in direct opposition to the work done in an advertising agency where everything is plotted out, you think through the strategy, and nothing’s left to chance.

That’s true. My work [in the studio] is totally open ended. In the advertising business there’s always an end in sight. It’s an entirely different thought process. I live in two different worlds.

Do you feel comfortable living in two different worlds?

It’s interesting. I have two different names. My professional name as an artist and advertising person is Hank. But among friends from high school and college, I’m Chips. My business friends, they’re interested in productivity, and how long does it take me to make it? And, how many do I make in a year? I have no idea. It’s not the way an artist thinks. It’s funny — the way they [people in business] think and how an artist thinks, and I have both of these in my mind.

What role does social media play in your practice?

Old Painter Attacks New Canvas, oil on canvas, 44″ h x 56″ w, 2025, Hank Feeley

Zero. I don’t do Facebook. I don’t do Instagram. I don’t have any relationship to it. I have a website that my daughter-in-law put together for me about 20 years ago, and it has never changed. It has [a tab] that says “About Hank Feeley,” and when you click on it, it says, “Information to come.” When people ask me for my website, I tell them to Google me. All the information about me comes through the galleries that represent me. They put it all out there. I’m too old to deal with that stuff.

What do you believe is the visual artist’s role in the world?

To make us better humans. It stimulates our better emotions. It causes us to wonder. It makes us more empathetic, more collaborative, more willing to listen. When you say that, you ask what the hell is the government doing defunding the arts?* It just doesn’t make sense. If you’re going to have peace in the world, you’ve got to have that collaboration and empathy — the things that art stimulates.

[*Beginning in the mid-1950s, the State Department realized the potential of jazz to build bridges with other nations, and started sending jazz musicians on state-sponsored tours of the USSR and the Middle East. PBS made a film about it.]

What part or parts of the world find their way into your work?

Courant Ascendant, oil on canvas, 48″ h x 36″ w, 2023, Hank Feeley

I like to think that all parts of the world do. I try to be very observant, very engaged with the world. I’m particularly good at catching visual things. I read a lot. I love poetry. That all enters my art.

How does living in Northern Michigan inform and influence your creative practice?

It’s indirect. I do go out and do landscape painting, but I’m mainly a studio artist. The stuff I do Florida and the stuff I do in Michigan is the same. But I will say this about where I live both in Florida and Michigan: It’s great to live in a community that appreciates art, where there are other artists to engage with. That keeps you fresh and stimulated — aside from the beauty of Northern Michigan and Leelanau County. It’s just a comfort to live here.

Did you know anyone, when you were growing up, who had a serious creative practice?

My two cousins who started me out were artist types, and went on to become professional artists. In the advertising business, you’re dealing everyday with artists. Many of the artists I dealt with in the business were, outside of that, serious fine artists. They did a lot of their own art and had gallery shows. When I went to the SAIC, the professors — some were my age, some were younger than me — I became very close to   many of them: Ted Halkin, Dan Guston, the Chicago Imagists, Barbara Rossi, Ed Paschke. My art was highly influenced by their thought process. All their art was different, but they had a good thought process: invent things, create, experiment.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

Gallimaufry, oil on canvas, 44″ h x 56″ w, 2023, Hank Feeley

That’s a problem for me now. When I lived in Chicago — I haven’t had a residence in Chicago for about six years — I used to be in contact with some of the people I knew from the SAIC. They’d come to my studio, look at my work, and we’d talk. I don’t do that much anymore, and I miss it.

What role does exhibiting play in your practice?

Once a year I’m in a show in New York or Chicago. I want people to see what I’m doing. And, I especially want other artists to see what I’m doing. It goes back to what we were saying: Maybe somebody will become a better human because I’ve touched their emotions, I’ve made them think about art a lot more.

How do you fuel and nurture your creativity?

I look at what I do as a job. You show up in the morning, and you do your work. Some days you don’t feel like doing it, but you do because it’s your job. I’m in my studio every day — every day I’m not playing golf, which is on Wednesdays — and I start working. I don’t think in terms of waiting for inspiration; if you wait for inspiration, you’ll never get anything done. What you do is you work, and as you work, maybe something inspiring happens. But you have to put in the hours, put in the time, put in the dedication. I think of it that way.

Even though you’re putting out a lot of creative energy, it doesn’t sound as though you’re draining the well.

One of Hank’s inspiration boxes.

I don’t feel drained. A very good friend of mine who’s an artist said the way to live is to have a creative thought every day. It’s a regimen. Now, sometimes it’s hard to have a creative thought every day, but that’s your job and you’ve got to do it. So, I come in [to the studio] and I’ve got nothing going on, and I need to have some stimulus: I go to my boxes. That’s the great thing I have with these boxes. I can spend a day going through them, and all of a sudden: Boom! Let’s try this! Let’s try that. And bang! I’m off painting again.

What drives your impulse to make?

This goes back to being a human. Humans have always made. It’s in our nature. I’m doing what human beings are supposed to do. That’s what has made our world.


Learn more about Hank Feeley here.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

 

Creativity Q+A with Dani Knoph Davis

“Place has become the bedrock of my work — ‘place’ meaning Michigan, where I was born and raised,” said Boyne City painter Dani Knoph Davis. “Learning about the wildlife of a place is so important, but has been swept under the rug over the last 50 years.” And so, with every brushstroke, Dani, 39, makes work that seeks to raise awareness about the wonder and awe of the other animals who live in her neck of the woods.

This interview was conducted in April 2025 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Dani Knoph Davis


Describe the medium in which you work. What is your work?

I work with watercolor, gouache, pencil, graphite, and heavy cotton watercolor paper to create illustrations of Michigan wildlife.

I’ve often wondered if people who work in illustration feel like they’re not accepted as a part of the Capital “A” Art world.

It is its own thing. I don’t know what happened historically. When you go back to the early 1900s wildlife art was a big deal. Even for my grandparents, wildlife art was a big part of the Art scene. It seemed to slip away.

John James Audubon circa 1826

Your work is reminiscent of the style people associate with Audubon. You place your creatures in their indigenous setting, and bring in other critters that might be companions or symbiotic parts of that setting.

Symbiosis is definitely a big part of my work. I find ecology fascinating, how species relate to one another. There’s a deep truth in that. I really crave deep truths nowadays.

What “deep truths” are you craving?

Whenever the world began, life evolved — together, in harmony, in a way things made sense. In society today, I find so much confusion. I think that’s another reason why I create this kind of art: It brings me peace. And, I think other people find peace in nature art as well.

Is the natural world a more straightforward place to you?

Absolutely. One hundred percent. I hate to use the word “escape,” but in today’s world, when I go into nature, I feel like I’m trying to escape society, to find peace.

What draws you to the media in which you work?

In art school they teach you acrylics and oils right off the bat. When I graduated from art school, I found myself living in tiny spaces.To work in oil paint you need windows, and room to breathe and clean up. Watercolor, for me, was more practical. I also fell in love with the process of creating transparent layers — something that’s a lot more challenging with oil paint or acrylic. And it’s a lot easier to clean up.

Where did you attend art school?

I went to the University of Michigan’s School of Art and Design [graduated 2009 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts]. And I did an undergrad study abroad at the Glasgow School of Art [2008]. That was really meaningful.

What in particular did the Glasgow School of Art offer you as a student?

Cedar Waxwing Winterberry, watercolor, 17″ h x 11″ w, 2023, Dani Knoph Davis

I really enjoyed their program. It was more heavily focused on studio practice. Every student had their own studio space. Then you’d have an instructor you’d meet with once or twice a week, and they’d critique and help guide you. I felt like I started to grow as an artist then; whereas the University of Michigan was more focused on taking classes. There wasn’t enough studio time.

Describe your studio.

It has a view of a lot of trees out the window. It’s elevated on a hillside. I paint during the day, so that natural light is really important. It’s always a little bit messy, especially in the summer, during art fair season. It’s a room in my house, about 14 feet x 14 feet.

Your home studio is a continuation of what you said about working in small spaces. Are you accustomed to that now, or, in your heart of hearts do you long for a warehouse-sized studio?

I would love to double or triple the size of my studio. The next house I buy, it will be a priority to have a larger studio space.

What themes/ideas are the focus of your work? 

Place has become the bedrock of my work — “place” meaning Michigan, where I was born and raised. Learning about the wildlife of a place is so important, but has been swept under the rug over the last 50 years. We see small groups trying to raise awareness for species, and a lot of them do a great job. Our Department of Natural Resources and local tribes do a great job of stewarding species. But I come at that from an art angle. I want my art to help raise awareness for species in Michigan, but also remind people of the wonder and awe of wildlife. For example: When I’m at an art show, I get two or three good stories from people who walk into my booth, and they see a painting of a particular fish, and that reminds them of fishing with their grandfather; or of a turtle their sister caught when they were younger, and somebody got upset so they had to release it. For some reason, with adults, these things get buried. I want people to remember that these species are out there, and it’s their home, too.

Your work is about direct experience. How do you encounter these animals, and then reinvigorate them in your studio?

All this goes back to my childhood. My family has a generational log cabin on a lake in Gaylord. My favorite memories are being there with my family, paddling around the lake, seeing the loons, painted turtles, large-mouth bass, blue gill. These are experiences that have stuck with me my whole life. There’s always been something inside me that’s told me, These are important things. Don’t forget these things. Remember and share them. After I went to art school and I was trying to figure out what kind of artist I wanted to be, I kept going back to those experiences with wildlife in Northern Michigan. I also come from a family of hunters and fishermen. We have a lot of taxidermy in the cabin. And both of my grandparents were wildlife artists after they retired. To some degree, it feels like carrying on a legacy. I was so impacted by their work. Now, as I grow as an artist, I want to know more about Michigan species that I didn’t know about when I was growing up. It’s my own exploration I want to share with other people.

How do you begin to visualize the animals you want to paint? Are you sitting at the base of a tree waiting for a chipmunk to run over your toes?

No. But that sounds fun. In my earlier work, I’d work from my own photographs. Nowadays, I source inspiration from a program called iNaturalist. It’s a platform for people to take pictures of species and drop-pin their locations. A lot of biologists and naturalists use it in their studies. More recently, I find myself pulling multiple images and collaging them together in Photoshop to create my own compositions, which I paint from there.

What prompts the beginning of a project or composition?

It used to be I would do collections. My first collection was fish. Then I made collections of turtles and butterflies. Now I’m departing from that way of creating art. Trying to be a bit more spontaneous, and more poetic with my work.

Painted Turtle Water Lily, watercolor, 17″ h x 11″ w, 2025, Dani Knoph Davis

What does the poetic part of that mean?

Like this recent piece I did of a painted turtle with a water lily. It feels like a poem to me, without the words. Poetry is another place we can distill and crystalize ideas. Mary Oliver is great at that.

The subject matter you’re dealing with would make it easy to migrate into the totally scientific. In your work, you’re trying to infuse the subject with life. You’re not painting taxidermied work. You’re depicting the life inside the creature.

I try to capture that essence. One thing that has disturbed me about the scientific world of biology, natural history 100 years ago, paintings were always created from death. In biology, you are always looking at the dead specimen in the bottle. I want my paintings to convey the beauty of the life of the creature.

Dani’s favorite tools: paint brushes [and tubes of paint to go with them].
What’s your favorite tool?

The paintbrush. Brushes and tubes of paint.

Do you use a sketchbook? Work journal? Any kind of tool to make notes and record thoughts about your work?

I use Photoshop to create my compositions. But when I have a piece in my mind, I always work compulsively on the composition, and then I go straight into painting the final piece. One and done: I’m not a sketch artist.

Why is making-by-hand important to you?

I honestly feel like it’s genetic, in my DNA. I’ve always loved physical labor, and making things by hand. Given the option of whipping cream with the whisk or a hand mixer, I will use the whisk. I love doing things by hand. I get so much gratification. I feel like I learn more. And, I feel like I’m connected to what I’m doing. I think the way most people can relate to this is: There’s a difference when you type an email versus handwriting a letter to somebody. It’s hard to put words to it, but it’s there, and we all know it. This year I started handwriting letters to one of my best friends who lives in Chicago. It has been really joyful, sharing handwritten letters with somebody.

King Salmon, watercolor, from Dani’s Coldwater Collection.

When did you commit to working with serious intent?

After art school, I moved to Seattle, and felt like Alice in Wonderland throughout my 20s, trying to find a way forward. I felt I needed meaning [in her life], so I started going down to the locks and watching the salmon. I got fascinated by salmon, and learning about their life story. Just the fact that they’re born in a river, and the river imprints on them: After they’re gone out to sea, they know exactly where to return to where they were born. So, I created a collection of salmon paintings, and met with a gallery owner who asked to show them. Weirdly enough, I [in the process of] moving back to Michigan. I got a phone call as I was driving through the Upper Peninsula, and [the Seattle gallerist] told me the whole collection had just sold to a buyer from Oregon. That was the moment I started thinking, OK. I could do this seriously.

 What role does social media play in your practice?

I don’t do social media anymore. I stepped away from it in 2019. I found it was giving me more grief than I wanted. I don’t miss it. I haven’t looked back.

Did you step back from it personally and professionally?

Yes.

So, your online presence is through your website.

Yes. And occasionally I’ll send out an e-newsletter.

Many times, in these interviews, artists will tell me how much they value Instagram, for instance. They talk about being able to show the world their work, or being able to look at other people’s work. How do you weigh in on that?

When I hear the word “world,” I cringe a little bit nowadays. Going back to the importance of place, and being in the place you are, and recognizing its importance, I find that it’s more fulfilling for me to be present in the place I am as opposed to scrolling through the world. It’s totally overwhelming for me.

How do you let the world know what you make?

The most important thing I do to connect with others around my work is to do art fairs in the summer. We have a great art fair scene in Northern Michigan. I’ve met so many wonderful people at these shows, and made so many wonderful connections with real people: artists, buyers. People have shared their wildlife stories with me, and that has become cherished and important to me.

Cardinals, watercolor, 17″ h x 11″ w, 2025, Dani Knoph Davis

What do you believe is the visual artist’s role in the world?

For me, personally: Refocusing our minds on wildlife in the place where we live. And reminding folks of the awe and wonder they’ve experienced in the natural world. At the end of the day, I selfishly want people to care more about wildlife. That’s my drive, even if it’s as simple as not cutting down the tree that blocks your view in the front yard.

It’s an overwhelming job. How do you keep despair at bay?

I pay attention to what our local conservancies are doing, and try to support their work. I try to help share the stories about all the good work our DNR and local tribes are doing — a lot of people like to criticize what those agencies aren’t doing right when in reality they’re doing a lot of innovative work to support populations and habitat for wildlife. I think we don’t give them nearly enough credit. If you go back in Michigan history and look at our state from the late 1800s to the 1920s, the habitat was devastated. Young folks don’t know that now, and a lot of people have forgotten it. Clearcut city: A lot of our woods built Chicago. Overfishing. Sturgeon were almost completely wiped out. If you look back to the 1930s when the DNR was set up, so much incredible work has been done. We can’t take that for granted.

How does living in Northern Michigan inform and influence your creative practice?

It’s part of the foundation. It’s the original inspiration for me. It’s an endless inspiration for me. We are so lucky to have so much conserved, preserved land up here.

Would you be doing different work if you did not live in Northern Michigan?

Probably not. I’d be doing wildlife art no matter where I lived.

Did you know anyone, when you were growing up, who had a serious creative practice?

Both my grandma and my grandpa, Bill and Joan Davis. When they retired, my grandma painted landscapes in a French Impressionist style. Her painting would make my brain feel like a symphony. My grandfather was woodcarver, and [his subject was] wildlife. We have a loon he carved in our cabin that looks like a real loon. The amount of detail is incredible. They were a huge influence.

Who has had the greatest and most lasting influence on your work and practice?

Laura Yeats. Her partner ran the gallery in Seattle. She was influential, and one of the first people in my early adulthood who encouraged me, and gave me the confidence to take my art seriously.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

Bluegill, watercolor, 11′ h x 14′ w, 2020, Dani Knoph Davis

My partner, John. I ask him to do this a lot — to look at my work, and make suggestions. In art school, they teach you how to critique work, and it can be brutal, but you learn how to take it and how to word things in a way that is constructive without being offensive. I wish everybody was able to convey constructive criticism. It applies to so many things in life.

Are you able to take those skills and apply them to your own work? Self-criticize?

Yes. I’m very critical of my own work, which is why I spend so much time composing the piece before I put pencil to paper.

You spoke earlier of exhibiting your work at summer art fairs. Let’s get into this some more: What is the role of the exhibition in your practice?

I love sharing my art work at art fairs because you get to meet the viewer, and [hear the viewer’s] perspective, which is something you don’t always get in a traditional gallery setting. I value that so much — on a human level. I’ve gravitated to the art fair world because of that. I’ll do traditional gallery exhibits on occasion, maybe one a year. But it’s so funny to me to drop off a painting, and then see it hung on a gallery wall, and leave it. I love connecting with people over art.

More of that direct experience stuff.

Yes. There’s been this dialogue, culturally, about the lack of third spaces. As a society, we’ve lost these places in the world where anybody can go to, and interact with other people. In Europe, their markets are a great example; or, their civic squares. The library seems like the last-standing example of these places. And, of course, we have great farmers’ markets in Michigan; but there aren’t many places now where you’re just meeting folks, and conversing, and sharing stories. There’s a certain joy and fulfillment of communing with strangers. My mom will help me at art fairs, and she ends up in these conversations with strangers about anything and everything. Next thing you know they’re talking like they’re old buddies.

How do you feed/fuel/nurture your creativity?

Spring Peeper

It’s always about getting outdoors for me. In particular, the spring, summer and fall. The winter is so quiet up here, but I love finding wildlife tracks in the snow. They [the other animals] are out there even though you don’t see them. I cross-country ski a lot. We’re on the brink of everything coming back to life. I opened the door the other day and heard Spring Peepers. It’s still so cold out, but they’re peeping.

What drives your impulse to make?

It’s like meditation for me. It’s such an intense focus that I can’t think about all the other life stuff that stresses me out.

You have a day job. What is it?

I do marketing, graphic design and some advertising for some realtors.

How does the work of your day job cross-pollinate with your studio practice?

Having a day job forces me to have a really intense schedule. I schedule my studio time every morning. I wake up, and I spend the first three hours of my day in my studio. Then, I do my day job. I run on a strict schedule, and that works for me.


Read more about Dani Knoph Davis here.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

 

 

Creativity Q+A Video Interview with 2025 Manitou Music Poster Artist Barbara Reich

On a 2024 painting expedition, Traverse City, Michigan painter Barbara Reich stumbled upon a small group of windswept trees and vegetation 600 feet above Lake Michigan. She knew it was the scene she wanted to record, and it became Sleeping Bear Dune Overlook #10, a pastel painting that pays homage to yet another of the National Lakeshore park’s iconic views and dune ecology – and the hands-down favorite of the Manitou Music Poster Project Committee for the 2025 Manitou Music Poster.

Barbara Reich talks about her experience painting this scene, and the challenges of working en plein air on top of a dune. Watch a recorded conversation with Barbara below.

The GAAC’s Manitou Music Poster project began in the early 2000s. Now an invitational, the Manitou Music Poster Committee selects original paintings that offer a quintessential view, and capture the spirit of the Glen Lake region and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. All the past Manitou Music Poster winners may be viewed here. Sleeping Bear Dune Overlook #10 is available at the GAAC or online.

Read more about the Sleeping Bear Dune Overlook #10 – the site – here. https://www.nps.gov/places/000/sleeping-bear-dune-overlook-pssd10.htm

The 2025 Manitou Music Poster is available for purchase here.

Creativity Q+A with Douglas Racich

Leelanau County painter Douglas Racich, 64, divides his painting time between watercolor and egg tempera, an ancient, slow-moving medium made of ingredients that sound like the beginning of a cake recipe. The world outside Racich’s studio moves quickly. He does not. He depicts still, quiet subjects. Racich’s paintings are about Northern Michigan — to which he, his wife Michelle and three children moved in 1998 from Illinois. He hopes they’ll cause people to stop, look, and “slow down.”  

This interview was conducted in February 2025 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Douglas Racich


Describe the medium in which you work. What is your work?

It’s 50/50: watercolor and egg tempera.

What is egg tempera?

It’s egg yolk and water. That’s the basic recipe [into which] you’re adding pigment. The amount of pigment you add can make it appear more or less translucent. In general, it leaves an opaque surface when compared to oil and acrylic. Watercolor has a matte appearance.

Do you prepare your own egg tempera paints?

I do. I think most artists who are working in that medium do. It’s tricky. Some pigments mix easily. Others are hydrophobic, and don’t do what you want them to do.

Do you raise chickens?

I don’t. I do have a CSA membership [community supported agriculture] from Nine Bean Rows down the road. Eggs come with the CSA [box]. I don’t eat eggs. I just eat plant-based foods.

Egg tempera is an ancient medium. It’s a niche medium. The world is full of readymade paints. So: 1.) What was it that sparked your interest in painting in egg tempera?; and 2.) How did you learn?

Andrew Wyeth [2007]
Initially, as a kid, I’d do little sketches here and there — I never knew anyone who was a real artist. Right after the birth of our first child, my wife got me a set of watercolor paints, and I said, That’s really nice. I threw them in a drawer, and didn’t touch them for a number of years. I finally got them out and started painting in watercolor, which I did for two or three years. As I got the hang of it — I had no formal training in art, so this is all just trial and error — I started picking up books at the library, and started reading about artists, and this gets to the question of egg tempera. I saw a book about Andrew Wyeth, and that was it. I knew I needed to figure this [egg tempera painting] out.

If you could zero in on the thing that Wyeth’s paintings made you want to learn how to paint in egg tempera, what would that be?

Karl, 1956, collotype, 17″  x 24″ w, Andrew Wyeth

We lived in Illinois, outside of Chicago, before we moved here [to Leelanau County] — it was a non-suburban setting that made me think of where Wyeth lived [in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania]. I think I was drawn not only to his subject matter, but to the light. When he set up paintings, they weren’t like the standard landscape, the standard portrait. They were just a little bit different. There’s a great one he did of his neighbor Karl. I love that piece.

How did you learn to prepare your paints?

Well, pre-internet: the library. I looked up other artists beside Wyeth. Robert Vickrey was a big egg tempera painter, and some of his books had nice details about how he put those mixtures together, and the processes he used. In the egg tempera field, there are different ways people mix their paints. I take the egg yolk and water mixture, put it in a little container, put in the color, and mix it up. You can vary the ratio of water to egg, but generally it’s 50/50. Mostly, it has been trial and error figuring out the basic formula. I just kept working on [the formula] until I felt comfortable. In this age, people like fast. With acrylic paint, you can just whip out a painting. You can’t do that with tempera. You’ve got to be patient.

There’s a stillness to your paintings. They’re quiet.

Pears On The Tool Box, 2025, egg tempera, 18” h x 30” w, Douglas Racich

I don’t have a good feeling for figure work and people. I’m not confident in my drawing ability, which has led me to a lot of my landscapes, to the outbuildings, and the still lives I do. They may seem quiet because they’re about non-moving things.

What other subjects are in your line of vision?

Valencia, 2021, egg tempera, 14” h x18” w, Douglas Racich

I love gardening. I love growing squash, so I’ve done multiple squash paintings. And, I like flowers, too. I’m surrounded by cherry orchards on one side of our property, and apple orchards on the other; I’ve done a lot of pieces about those. There’s no shortage of subject matter. I grew up on a farm. It was my uncle’s farm [southwest of Chicago], and my parents had a little house next door to it. It’s how I grew up. It’s what I love.

How has the lack of formal, visual art training affected or advanced or put hurdles in the way of your practice?

I don’t know that it has had any impact whatsoever. I have on occasion heard remarks from people who’ve gone to art school about “real artists” versus “not-real artists,” and I’m not sure what that is. I feel like I’ve put in the 10,000 hours.

[NOTE:  The “10,000-hour rule,” popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers,” suggests that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve mastery in a particular field.]

I don’t know why that gets on my nerves. My self-training hasn’t affected anything. There hasn’t ever been a problem getting into galleries, exhibiting.

How have you taught yourself?

Looking up stuff. If the internet had been around when I first started painting, it would have been fantastic. I looked at a lot of print material. Some of the big art magazines back then had wonderful articles showing how people made their work, their technique. Besides looking things up, I kept on trying to do it. Tempera can be frustrating. You have to be careful, and patient. You can work for weeks on a piece and not like it. I had a piece, a still life with cherries. It was almost too simple, and I didn’t like it. I ended up cleaning out another area [on the board] above the cherries, and painted another cherry above them. I laid in all the shadows so it appeared that the cherry was hanging in mid-air. I called it The Rapture. But that’s the nice thing with tempera. You can go back. I’ve completely sanded down a board, and started all over again. You do get a second chance, but it’s tough after you’ve spent all those hours.

Describe your studio/workspace.

Doug’s studio, indicated by the levitating arrow.
Doug’s studio: interior view.

I have three children, and we live in a very small farmhouse. Early on, we had a couple of upstairs bedrooms that weren’t being used. That was my studio. Once I got the [studio] finished out here, the sense of space was overwhelming. I don’t think it’s that big, but compared to being in a little bedroom all the time … Paintings stacked on top of paintings: It felt very claustrophobic. I’ve never done big paintings, bigger than the standard watercolor sheet [2’ x 3’].

[NOTE: Doug’s studio is approximately 350 square feet. It is the front portion of an old barn on his property. The barn was constructed in the 1870s.]

What prompts the beginning of a project or composition?

The end of the painting I’m working on. There’s that. There’s the need to push stuff out for galleries. In general, when I think I’m getting to the end of a piece, I’ll think about what I want to do next. If I’ve been working on a watercolor that has taken forever to finish, I think, I’ve got to switch to tempera. As far as subject matter? I do a lot of photography. If I’m out on a hike or on a road trip, I’ll take pictures of things that interest me, or will be reference material. In my head, I can keep thinking about a piece I’d like to paint, and it could be years. At some point it’s: OK, it’s time to make this. Then there are other times, bringing vegetables out of the garden, I’ll think, This is a great squash, and, boom: I’ll want to paint that right away. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It organically happens.

How many galleries represent your work?

It has taken a hit. When I was living south of Chicago, I had two or three in the city. Then, up here, I was showing in as many as four. Right now, I’m down to one gallery in Elk Rapids [Mullaly’s 128 Gallery].

Generally speaking: Are the subjects you paint dictated by your desires and interests? Or, knowing the market for a certain gallery, do you adjust what you make so it’s a better fit?

Still Together, 2024, watercolor, 19″ h x 37″ w, Douglas Racich

When I was showing at [the now closed] Main Street gallery I did find myself leaning toward more local images: the Sleeping Bear Dunes, historic buildings. I still love those things, but the still lifes are pretty universal, and it wouldn’t matter where they were made. I tend to now try to find subjects that would work anywhere. Many of the buildings from the Sleeping Bear Dunes area, people outside of this region wouldn’t know where the buildings were. They’d just think it was a fun picture of a barn or old stone building. I have a piece in the Dennos [Northwest Michigan Regional Juried Exhibition] right now. It’s simple: Just a big field of grass with a couple of oak trees in the background. It’s a scene from Ashland, Oregon. I’ve had a couple of people ask me where this was in the Dunes? It has that open feeling to it you [can experience during a hike in the Dunes].

What’s your favorite tool?

Doug’s favorite tools: his mixing trays.

My mixing trays [plastic and ceramic]. Especially with watercolor and tempera, I’m constantly mixing the different colors, and I can use the same trays for both media. I love seeing the paints laid out, I love seeing the different colors, and knowing what I’ve got to do: They’re there, but I’ve got to get to work

Do you use a sketchbook? Work journal? What tool do you use to make notes and record thoughts about your work?

I don’t. If I do anything, it’s about color combinations I’ve used on certain pieces. Sometimes I’ll find myself doing three or four small still lives at the same times. I might make notes on what colors I was using to make a particular mix if I have to recreate the color I was using. Mostly, it’s technical stuff.

When did you commit to working with serious intent? What were the circumstances?

I had a friend, Joan, who was an elementary art teacher, and also worked as an art agent helping to place artists’ works in galleries. [In the mid-1990s] she saw my work, and was instrumental in me starting to show a lot in the Chicago area. She vacationed up here, and got me in a gallery in Charlevoix. She said, You’ve got to go up there. I said, It’s like Alaska. Why would I want to go to Northern Michigan? She told me I had no idea. We eventually visited. She was responsible for me thinking about painting as real work. Until then, my painting took place on weekends and after work.

You had a day job.

I was a dentist. It wasn’t a calling. A number of things came together that made me realize I didn’t want to keep on doing that. At that point, I was also starting to sell more art. We’d finally made our way up here, after all the poking and prodding from Joan, so we wanted to move up here. And, that’s what we did. I painted full-time for four or five years after we moved up here. At this point, my kids are getting into high school and college age, so I took a job [outside the home] for a biological testing firm, and they had a laboratory in Traverse City. That took care of the bills, but I finally let go of that. The painting never stopped. Even during that time, I still had four galleries I was showing it. It was hard. Now I’m back to just-art. Nowadays, with social media, [the art business] is a different thing. I used to just rely on the galleries to do most of the work. Now, I try to get a handle on social media.

What role does social media play in your practice?

I’m a big Instagram-er. I don’t look at Facebook anymore. I love Instagram. I love seeing what other artists do. I think social media is essential now. What can it hurt to just throw stuff out there.

What’s the visual artist’s role in the world?

To get people to slow down a minute or two in their lives. Just to sit there and focus on something for a minute: stop and look. People are so busy. I don’t think people spend a lot of time just being quiet. It’s hard, the way society is — with the internet, with phones, with work. People are just constantly moving. I hope that people can have a little, quiet moment when they are looking at art. A little sense of calm and quiet.

We live in a world where people are bombarded by images. There’s no dearth of visuals to look at. But looking at something that’s hanging on the gallery wall is different than looking at something on a screen. I think it’s hard to get people to move away from the abstraction of their phones, and their screens, and all the millions of images they see every day, to directly experience something in a gallery wall, and consider it quietly.

Bowl Of Blues, 2018, watercolor/drybrush, 14″ h x 14″ w, Douglas Racich

I’ve hung my work in art walks, for instance. People will go through the different shops displaying art, and 85 percent of the people just want to get their books stamped so they could put it in the prize raffle at the end of the walk. They just flew by. I do think museums and galleries, since there’s nothing else in there but the art, helps people to slow down a little bit. That’s the drawback of social media, trying to capture an image on a little screen. Does the viewer even understand the detail? It’s hard to capture.

Who has had the greatest, and most lasting influence on your practice?

My wife, because of all the support that has allowed me to do this. From an artistic standpoint, it was, initially, Andrew Wyeth. That was the thing that made me want to paint, in the style I wanted to paint. I also love the comments of other artists, friends who are visiting, just chatting about what they’re doing, what I’m doing.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

Again, my wife, Michelle. She’ll be very honest with me. It’s nice having grown-up children now: one who paints all the time, the other had a gallery.

What role does exhibiting play in your practice?

If you want to make money, the work has got to be out there. I like getting feedback from the gallery owners, whether it’s good or bad. I like trying to participate in local shows — it gets the public together to support the arts.

How do you feed and nurture your creativity?

Lightning Rod, 2023, egg tempera, 18″ h x14″ w, Douglas Racich

Number 1: Getting outside, since I tend to paint what’s around me. Hiking, biking, kayaking, a little ride in the car — that nurtures it. I’m not specifically looking for things. I just happen upon them. I do love galleries. Looking at other peoples’ work is empowering.

What drives your impulse to make?

I think about that sometimes from a biological, evolutionary standpoint. It’s just something that’s in me.

If you’re not painting, do you get the shakes?

The summertime gets busy. The garden. The yard. It’s warm out, and I do love being outside, but I do think I need to get back working in the studio. So, yeah. There’s a little something that’s ticking away inside me.


Read more about Douglas Racich here.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

Creativity Q+A with Justin Shull

Traverse City painter Justin Shull “knew, even in high school, that I really wanted to be making visual art in some capacity.” And, that’s the course the 41-year-old artist set: a 2004 BA in Studio Art from Dartmouth College [Hanover, New Hampshire], followed by a 2009 MFA in Visual Arts from Rutgers University [New Brunswick, New Jersey]. But road blocks, and side roads, and other impediments got between him and total studio immersion. Now, he’s free to practice, and this is what he has learned.

This interview was conducted in January 2024 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Justin Shull


What is your work?

For the past three years I’ve worked full-time as a fine artist. Prior to that, my last role was product manager for a video company, Riot Games.

Any male, age 12 – 25 has heard of the game [he worked on]. It’s called League of Legends. It’s an online multi-player game, kind of a fantasy-based capture the flag with very deep strategy. I joined the company in 2011 when they were small — about 100 employees — and the company grew to about 3,500 employees world-wide, and had about 350 million monthly players at one point. Quite a large game. Very popular.

How did your formal training affect your development as a creative practitioner?

Le Porche Soleil, 27″ h x 20″ w, acrylic Gouache on paper on panel, 2021, Justin Shull.

I knew, even in high school, that I really wanted to be making visual art in some capacity. But I thought then it was something I did along side or parallel to whatever profession I’d choose. At the time I was in engineering, then pre-med. I explored a lot of different directions and ended up studying studio art [undergraduate studies], and then going back after some time in the work force to do my MFA. I thought I wanted to teach, and be in higher education, and surrounded by that environment and be part of that community. What I enjoyed about undergrad, graduate school and teaching was the ability to explore visually, wherever your creative sensibility took you — there’s no market pressures in that. A good portion of my creative journey has been within that context, and it has only been in recent time that I’ve been trying to make work that connects more directly with a market.

What did you take away from school that you now see is part of the way you practice in your studio?

One of the dominant mindsets coming out of the academic environment is to focus narrowly, and in a very rational, research-based approach. I’m still deciding if that’s the right way for me to work. Very often, it doesn’t seem like the right way to work because I have found I tend to work on multiple series in parallel, that are only tangentially related, and that actually have to develop on their own over time. Having to describe them up front as [an academic] thesis is not the right way to arrive at the best work. That’s one thing that has taken me years to figure out in terms of what was the dominant framework for working in academia — versus creating a work flow and an approach that works in the studio. That was really important because how you structure your approach to work, and how you constrain or not constrain yourself, has a big impact on outcomes over time. I want to say I received a lot of technical, hands-on education around how to use the media, and I did not. Most of the programs are much more focused on the conceptual side, and they leave it to the students to figure out the medium.

Why do you think that is?

I think it’s a pendulum-swing reaction to the over-emphasis on a singular approach to the medium, which defined academies for centuries. There was a really strong reaction to that through Abstract Expressionism [to the present time]. There are programs that really stress how to, for instance, develop your facility with oil paint. But a lot of programs do not.

Do you work in oil, or acrylic, or both?

In undergraduate I worked primarily in oil paint until I developed a severe sensitivity. I’ve been limited in my ability to use oil paint since then. I only work with it outdoors now. But there are a couple of painting that I’m working on [in the studio] that are going to require some oil paint. As a medium there are certain things I can do with it optically that I can’t with acrylic. I tend to look at whether I’m using acrylic paint, or oil paint, or another medium in part [determined by] what that medium allows me to do visually, and in part what’s contained in that medium from an historical context.

Give me one example of what you can do with oil paint.

Because oil paint has a longer working time, you can use soft brushes to achieve very subtle gradations and blends that you cannot with acrylic. There are more recent developments with the open [acrylic] paints that let you begin to approximate that; but there is something about the way the oil blends materially and optically that lends itself to certain applications.

Describe your studio.

Tru Fit Trouser Buildings photo courtesy of Eric Gerstner.

I work in a live-work space in the Tru Fit Trouser Building in Traverse City. In total, it’s about 1,300 square feet. I have about 700 square feet of that set up as a studio. I’ve been in this space for two year, and I specifically wanted to work out of this space because of its tall, white walls. There’s really a flexible track lighting system with high CRI [color rendering index] lights so I can approximate what larger work would look like hanging in a gallery. For me, that was part of the process of working up in scale, and developing studio work — not just landscapes rooted in outdoor observation.

You’re able to bring the landscape ideas inside, and complete them in the studio — as opposed to confining yourself to plein air painting.

Yes. Plein air painting is a great exercise in staying calm, collected, and focused on translating my experience of the space around me in real-time, navigating changing light and sometimes challenging weather conditions, and maintaining the mindset that my primary objective is to observe and translate spontaneously in a way that ultimately will be inviting to re-discover later (both for me and any other viewer) versus falling into the trap of going out to “make a good painting” or to “make a painting that will sell.”  Everything I learn while painting en plein air filters into my studio work, but for me the studio is a place where ideas can unfold at a much slower pace, sometimes even over the course of years. I might develop a digital sketch over the course of a few weeks and then return to that idea a few years later to make a painting based on that sketch and the painting is then able to unfold into its own self and perhaps push some of those ideas even further. And more recently in the past year, branch out from landscape altogether into a more figurative, allegorical series.

You have been known as a “landscape painter.” You exhibited a piece in the GAAC’s 2023 Swimming exhibition that suggested you were trying to get out of the landscape silo, to explore other themes and subjects. How hard is it, when one is known as one thing, to start moving in other directions?

Swimmers In The Sea Of Translation, acrylic on panel, 32” h x 32” w x 1.5” d, 2022, Justin Shull.

I’m still learning that. There’s a couple of different axes on which you can answer. One: It can be quite easy, if you’re just talking about making work. I can go into the studio and make something completely different. That part is easy. But then there’s the question of how it’s received? How do meet expectations, or not meet expectations, and how do people respond. That’s the part I’m still figuring out. Much of work from the last year I have available on the web through a couple of private viewing rooms, but I haven’t posted it my website yet. That’s one of my big project this year, to decide how I want to integrate, or not, those different bodies of work. There’s value in looking at historical examples of how people had multiple, diverse bodies of work versus a singular body of work. But then, I can decide that even if that didn’t work for someone, I’m going to make it work this way.

You paint landscapes in lots of lovely, luscious color. You’re also painting landscape in winter in a primarily black and white palette. Usually, when people paint the landscape that do that when it’s sunny, 70 degrees, and the world is in bloom. You, however, are finding something very paintable in a starker landscape. Talk about that.

Into The Woods, 72″ h x 72″ w, acrylic on linen, 2023, Justin Shull.

The root  of that is I don’t actually see myself as painting the landscape. What I see myself doing is painting my response, my representation of my experience of the world, which manifests in different ways. One is interaction with a landscape. One is interaction with various media, technologies. I always look at the landscapes I paint as metaphors for some other state of being, or mindset, or philosophy, and that creates a lot of space for working with different [seasonal] lighting conditions, subject matter within the landscape that might not be there to celebrate the sunny day, but be there to speak to our human experience as we move through the world. That’s how I come to the landscape. And then, of course, the audience will take different things away as well. That’s the beauty of it — there’s always room for a range of interpretation once the artwork is out in the world.

What’s your favorite tool?

Favorite tool: a projector.

My favorite tool is my projector. It allows me to accomplish a lot more than I would otherwise accomplish. In the history of larger-scale public painting there’s always the question of transfer, and how one scales their design — work at a small scale to work at a public scale. Digital projectors are amazing. I can make a drawing, a collage, an iPad drawing. I can combine them all. I can take that to an 8 ft. x 8 ft. canvas. I don’t have to sit there and grid out — for hours and hours and hours. In that way, it’s a productivity tool. It also helps you see things in a new way very quickly. And, I try to be really upfront that I use a projector in my work. When you start to talk about tools and methods, artists can very quickly start to splinter into ideological camps. I like to have that conversation with people who might not like to embrace photography as a source, or certain technologies. I’m happy to talk with anyone — especially people working in the Western traditions, the centuries of utilizing optical tools in the studio.

The distinction I hear you making is this: The machine isn’t doing the heavy creative lifting. It’s helping facilitate your expression of your original work. I think that’s where the conversation begins to get into “explain yourself” territory.

To our point, the bigger theme is the conscious choice as to which technologies we use, and to what extent efficiency is the goal. There are times when efficiency gains are really useful. And there are times when being in the middle of something, and having to make a decision with your hands is very useful.

Do you use a sketchbook? Work journal? What tool do you use to make notes and record thoughts about your work?

I have a couple spiral bound sketchbooks. One of them I use to do color tests with paints. One of them I use to sketch out ideas. Then, I also will physically collage materials together — one-off pieces — that I collect and put into a photo portfolio at the end of the year. And, I also have a digital sketch pad.

You’ve created murals. You’ve worked as part of a video game start-up, and you’ve taught visual art at a number of universities. When did you decide to jettison these kinds of work, and commit to working with serious intent as a studio artist?

Weeping Cherry, 48″ h x 64″ w, acrylic on panel, 2022, Justin Shull.

Coming out of undergrad I already felt that, if I had the choice, my priority would be maintaining a studio practice as a primary pursuit. It was a question of financial practicality, which it wasn’t [for Justin] for a good 15 years. After a few years of teaching through the financial crisis in 2008, 2009, my mentors [at Southern Methodist University (SMU) and Texas Christian University (SMU)] who were going to be retiring, chose not to retire, and they gave the feedback that if I couldn’t sustain myself [as an adjunct instructor], I should do something else. That got me out of teaching. As far as working in the video games goes, it’s difficult to work at a start-up part-time. It was really, for many years, all or nothing. I [eventually] tapered off to a part-time consulting role [with Riot Games], and then was able to paint. I’d stopped making art. It around 2017 I started painting again, and I knew it was going to be a few years, minimum, before I could produce work that I could bring to gallery. Coming out of the financial crisis, a lot of institutions decided to lean more heavily on adjunct instructors, and begin tapering back and eliminating tenured [positions]. The whole model and ecosystem of tenured-track positions changed dramatically.

How did teaching cross-pollinate with making your own work? And, how did teaching get in the way of you making your own work?

What I like about teaching is you have the opportunity to always be learning something new about some method or software or conceptual approach — if you want to. There’s this ongoing embrace of curiosity and learning that can cross-pollinate, between students and educators. There is an atmosphere of possibility in the classroom, with younger students. Those are things I really enjoyed. In reality, the world of an adjunct instructor is pretty difficult. You’re teaching two-three times the course load of an associate or tenured professor, and very often trying to find additional income — just from a practical standpoint — on top of teaching. When I was teaching, I was teaching six classes a semester, and also had a part-time job. As you can image, if you want to be making work, or if you have any aspirations to have a family life, those things can quickly come in conflict. The practical application of the current [teaching] model is that it does not create space or time or ideal energy to make the best work. That’s just the reality.

What do you believe is the visual artist’s role in the world?

There are different roles the visual arts play in our lives, as creators and as audiences, and a lot of people can engage with the visual arts and benefit from the creative process and how it affects their day-to-day approach to navigating their lives. And then there’s the question of: What role the visual artist plays in attempting to reach a broader audience, and be part of a broader conversation. That’s always up for debate, and always evolving. In the best scenarios, those individuals help us to understand what it means to be human, and to understand what our value systems and belief constructs are; and help us think about how we’re navigating the world. That’s pretty lofty, but I think, at best, what the visual arts, what other arts, can do.

You’re not creating work that attempts to be photographic in its precision. You’re creating work that provides people with a visual of how you’re interpreting the world. Lots of times, people who work in the visual arts see things differently, or see different things, and give viewers an opportunity to think about, for instance, the start beauty of a black-and-white landscape in the winter.

Float On, 40″ h x 62″ w, acrylic on linen,2023, Justin Shull.

There is a certain satisfaction or joy that comes from being able to replicate a photograph. My goal is not to replicate a photograph. Photography and optical image projection, for me, are all tools. The image I ultimately create is a personal reflection.

What parts of the world find their way into your work?

Personally, one of the principles guiding my choice of colors, is the physiological effect color can have on us. Very often, the reactions a viewer is having to the colors in my work are connected to the types of experiences I’m trying to reference in the first experience of a location or a place. It might not be initially evident. Another thing that comes into a number of my landscapes is this idea of the intersection or interaction of our ordering of the world around us, and the natural logo or structure it pushes back with, and the dynamic balance — or lack of balance — between those two. There’s so many different ways to get at that.

On your website, you talked about direct observation: “ … my studies with Stanley Lewis at Dartmouth College and Chautauqua School of Art instilled in me the importance of direct observation, and introduced me to the amazing range of potential expression within this tradition.” Elucidate.

We can create space, and a sense of place completely from our imagination. Or, through strict adherence to shapes and colors that we observe directly. One of things I appreciated about Stanley was his commitment to going outside every day and working on a painting for two months straight, through changing weather and light conditions, and attempting to bring that experience into a single image — that was this condensation of time. My first exposure to folks going outdoors to paint was the Impressionists, and a lot of that work was really quick. To see this range of folks going out to experience the landscape directly, to capture their experience of it directly, for me that was a real revelation.

Why is there benefit in directly experiencing something?

I see value in personal, authentic, individual processing of then world around us rather than consuming what we’re told to consume.

How does Northern Michigan inform and/or find its way into your work?

Leap Off Eave, 40″ h x 40″, acrylic and acrylic gouache on panel, 2022, Justin Shull.

I moved to Northern Michigan in 2018 from Los Angeles, and I arrived here with really fresh eyes. I wasn’t familiar with the landscape. I wasn’t familiar with the light. I wasn’t familiar with the history of [the place] and how the space had built up. It was a real joy, and it has been a real joy, being here, responding to that, taking it in for the first time. I’m actually noticing now, as I become more familiar with it, that’s become harder to do; and I’m going to have to change my approach in some way to keep the work, or the way I respond to it, fresh. But that took a good five years or so before I began to feel that. One of the things I’ve enjoyed about moving to different parts of the country, and seeing different parts of the world over the past 20 year, each time you land somewhere, you’re able to look at it with fresh eyes. I’ve found that that’s really important to learning how to look honestly. For me, it’s about true discovery, and authentically analyzing, thinking about, and interpreting in a way that is often unexpected, [as opposed to] digesting something in way you’re told to digest it.

Who has had the greatest, and most lasting influence on your work?

Oddly, or not oddly, Frank Stella. I discovered his work in high school. His work, formally, I admired; but also, the lasting impression comes from the very dramatic way his work evolved into different pursuits over time — starting as a formal minimalist working his way into something of a maximalist and working from very flat images to 3D sculptural work. Just as a role model, with the variety of work an individual’s career over time can embody — that’s stuck with me. That ties back to the question of: What do you do when somebody knows you as doing this thing, and you start doing that thing? There are some people, from an early age, I admired in their ability to follow their pursuits authentically even if it meant confusing expectations.

To whom do you go when you need honest feedback?

I’m always trying to expand the range of people I can get honest feedback from. I tend to lean on the friends I went to grad school with, and mentors who I studied with, and close friends. Those tend to be the people I can ask, Take a look at this, what do you think? Ask me some tough questions. Or, let me know when you think something is not working. I enjoy when a good friend will call out that they don’t like what I’m doing, or it doesn’t work. I usually respond to that better. It’s a challenge to articulate why I made the decisions I made, and to figure out if I’m going to push further into that until it’s doing what I want it to do. Or, abandon something.

What is the role of the exhibition in your practice?

In the ideal world exhibiting artwork is, selfishly, a way for me to get real-world feedback from people about how they’re reacting to the work, and what they get from it. Sometimes that happens. I get the best feedback when I’m in-person with the work, doing a gallery walk-through and giving people additional context about the work. You really only get that through an exhibition space. I have my studio set up partially like an exhibition space, but there’s a lot more variables having your work out in the real world not knowing whose going to come into the gallery or art center and see it.

How do you feed/fuel/nurture your creativity?

I try to expose myself constantly to other people’s work, and keep it dialed in so I’m not overwhelmed, but able to challenge myself through other people’s work as much as possible. The other thing I’ve found is really important is making sure I make time for other things — physical activity, athletics, just getting outside and wandering and giving myself time to not have to talk to other people. Just being in your head and letting yourself wander are important aspects of being able to foster creativity.

What drives your impulse to make?

I think it’s to find shared meaning and shared understanding. At it’s core, that’s the impulse to make — which is to put something out into the world, and find someone who says, Oh yeah! Or: I didn’t see it that way. At the end of the day, it’s a social activity, even if done in isolation.


Learn more about Justin Shull here.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

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