My Mentor

Bastille Day 2001, personal date of independence. I fire my head mat cutter and cannot do his work and mine; the two jobs total twenty-five hours per day. My custom picture framing business must be forcibly downsized. I must admit the reason for such a drastic action: I want to be an artist.

This is ridiculous, of course. I have no training, no experience, no academic background. My last art class was in the eighth grade. I don’t even paint. There’s just this silly notion, a dream. Maybe, just maybe … pulling thread through fabric might constitute art making.

No one kills a wildly successful business for a pipe dream. Art is a fantasy and I must be crazy. People will undoubtedly laugh. Others will think me more insane than ever before. I need someone to talk to. I need advise, a sounding board, direction, hope … I need a mentor.

That coming Monday morning, my utility van almost drove itself to Prentice Avenue, to the home of a client, a self-supporting landscape oil painter, Stephen Chesley.

Stephen Chesley has talent in spades. His brushstrokes tell stories of atmospheric conditions on sun soaked afternoons and fire fly evenings. Smoke vapors rise from red primed surfaces and reflections of dawn ripple across inlet coves. Chesley’s oils are magic. Chesley’s pastels ooze with the sensation of mud between barefooted toes that creep across relic sand on twilight lit beaches. Chesley is an artist, the kind of artist I longed to be on that Monday morning.

He made tea. I cried, self-pitying tears of fear and doubt. What would he think of this hair-brained idea of mine … me, setting off to be an artist, thinking I might one day be a peer, gambling with my family’s entire income, doing something totally irrational?

“I want to be an artist.”

“You already are one. Now … just go do the work.”

For two hours the conversation meandered through the details of a creative existence. He talked about juried exhibitions, portfolios, resumes, labeling slides, charity events, daily commitment, greed, talent, skill, gallery representation, and how to keep an inventory book. He never laughed. Lastly, he reiterated, “Now … just go do the work.”

The van seemed to know its way back home. Good thing. My mind wasn’t on the traffic. It was trying to absorb more practical information than most studio art majors hear in four years of college. Stephen promised that a career in art was simple. He said, “Here’s a pencil. Here’s a piece of paper. All you have to do is go out and make a living.” He wasn’t trying to change my mind. None of his statements were issued as a warning. He knew just what to say and how to say it … straightforward, almost blunt, totally honest. “Now … just go do the work.”

No one said it would be easy. Stephen certainly didn’t suggest a painless path. I got a studio and an ordinary accountant’s ledger to track my progress, my finished pieces … just as he’d advised. I went to work. Most of what I made was rather pathetic. What did Stephen say? “Only you can make an original Susan Lenz. Now … just go do the work”

When I complained, he had a suggestion. “Make a series … one hundred pieces. Explore every possibility. Make sure the last one is as fresh, spontaneous and full of life as the first had been.” Stephen knew what he was talking about. He knew the dedication and challenge such an adventure requires. He understood the growth an artist experiences while creating one hundred related pieces. More than an exercise, Chesley’s proposition implied deeper concepts and a richly saturated journey. He’d been down this path before and I knew it. I’d seen and framed such a series, his series, 107 Ordinary Days.

During the first half of the year 2000 Stephen Chesley created one hundred and seven consecutive drawings in as many days, graphite on toned paper with China white highlights. I framed them; he crated them. A decade went by until they emerged as an October exhibit at Gallery 80808 in the Vista, Columbia’s arts and cultural district. Stephen called the works “timepieces”, fresh and new, from a long gone day and an imaginary place. They are back in their crates again. Viewing is only possible via an unbound mind … until 2020.

During that same month, my Decision Portraits were on view at City Gallery at Waterfront Park in Charleston. I don’t know how it happened. It certainly wasn’t intentional but there are exactly one hundred and seven pieces in that series. Good number. Good advise.

By this time, Stephen Chesley had moved into a rental space at Vista Studios. It is literally across the hallway from my studio. Good advise floats over the partition walls with the steady stream of artists seeking counsel. Some don’t even know they’re looking for direction. They think they’re just visiting, having an idle conversation, talking about mutual concerns or complaining about the economy. Supposed chitchat, but not really.

They leave after a creative alignment. They leave after conversations about pricing or the bare bone facts on taxes or artistic investments or the power found in hours of drawing and weeks of historic research. They leave with a final statement from an ultimate mentor, “Now … just go do the work.”

I’ve overheard frequent discussions about artistic influences … a Who’s Who exchange of A-list names … Innes, Homer, Whistler, Hopper, Ryder, Gauguin, Turner, Kline. But, Stephen is wise. He listens while others talk of out-rightly “borrowing” subject matter. He is patient when others suggest directly referencing ancient brushstrokes and usurping visions from past centuries. Stephen listens until he can calmly explain by example. Stephen knows how to translate inspiration from others into very personal explorations, the sort of work that remains true to his individual voice.

After seeing Turner to Cezanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales at the Columbia Museum of Art in 2009, Stephen Chesley was profoundly struck by the lone Vincent VanGogh piece on view, Landscape at Auvers in the Rain. Stephen knew the masterpiece was painted less than two weeks before VanGogh took his own life. Stephen also knew how to take such powerful emotions and influential desires and make them his own.

Research. Contemplation. Adaptation.

Stephen learned that VanGogh created twenty-three works in July 1890 … before the 27^th day, his last. Stephen researched the sizes … to the inch … built stretcher bars to these dimensions. He pulled and stapled linen and primed the surfaces. Then, on July 1^st, Stephen immersed himself in a parallel endeavor, a physical challenge to address painting as Vincent had done, to work through inclement weather, to load his brush and twist paint into lunar orbs against starry nighttime skies. Stephen pushed through the demands of long hours in order to achieve the same square inches of perfection as Vincent VanGogh had done. Stephen quit on July 27^th. This was “work” like Vincent … that’s “work” as in labor. The “work” however … that’s “work” as in ARTwork … was decidedly Chesley. Inspiration became an experience.

Stephen Chesley exhibited 27 Days in July later that same year. It was a perfect example of artistic influence without sacrificing personal stylistic choices, without stealing content or meaning, without compromise. “Now … just go do the work”. Chesley did. He still does …every day, day after day.

Productivity can be assumed when one is living such a creative, professional artistic life. Stephen’s studio is a maze of oils on panel, piles of sketches, stretched linen canvases stacked against metal sculptures, reference books mingled between folders of pastels, and frames in various conditions. (The frames were all perfect when I delivered them. Cramped conditions and the constant arrangements result in too many nicks and bumps!) How does Stephen keep track?

Well, there’s a series of inventory books. On my very first day of “being an artist”, Stephen instructed me to keep one too. They are just ordinary accountants’ ledgers. Each finished piece is listed beside a thumbnail sketch. Next come the dimensions, media, completion date, notations on “anything special or unusual”, price, and an inventory number. Hopefully, several of the entries will later come to include a buyer’s name and contact information. My last number in my inventory book is #1819. Stephen’s listings have five digits.

A couple of years ago, my husband Steve and I went to the National Gallery of Art to see the Edward Hopper retrospective. It was wonderful, of course. We wandered from room to room trying not to become overwhelmed … until we nearly bumped into a large, Plexiglas covered pedestal. Inside … inventory books … Edward Hopper’s inventory books … each with a thumbnail sketch, dimensions, media, completion date, notations, price, and an occasional buyer’s name. I was stunned. I had no idea.

Within the week, I told Stephen about the show, about the inventory books. He laughed. “I thought I told you! I’ve always kept such an inventory book because … well … if it were good enough for Hopper, it was good enough for me.” Funny thing is, I’ve always kept such an inventory book because “if it were good enough for Chesley, it was good enough for me!”

It’s been just over eleven years since I started that inventory book. I’ve grown to be a professional studio artist, the kind I longed to be. I was lucky in many respects but there wasn’t luck involved in the advise I’d been given … just truth, brutal and honest. I still struggle with too many moments of doubt, pitiful emotions, and issues of low self-esteem. Stephen Chesley rolls his eyes now … but with a smile. He’s well aware that I know what to do.

“Now … just go do the work”.