Wanda Taylor tapped as ‘Artist of the Year’

Wanda Taylor was recently selected as the Midwest Artist Association’s 2005 Artist of the Year. In her struggle to find her place in the art world, Wanda said, "I became a lot that I didn’t set out to be."

Wanda was raised in Cameron and received an art scholarship when she graduated from high school there. But she "chickened out" and didn’t pursue it.

"I always wanted to be an artist," she said. "But I didn’t feel like I was good enough."

Family and career occupied her time for the next several years. Wanda helped her husband on their farm, and also worked as a nurse, a cake decorator, and in a day care. Her husband George is employed as a soil conservationist in Chillicothe.

"I’d tell him it was a good thing he was stable," said Wanda. "Since I’ve had about 50 different careers."

When her daughter was around three-years-old, Wanda got a wild hair to paint her room in an outdoor garden motif. Syd and Brice Terry saw her work and liked it and asked her to paint rooms in their house. Then other people started asking and the Primitive Peddler in Cameron hired her to paint their shop.

And so was launched a fledgling mural business.

"Only it wasn’t what I really wanted to do," said Wanda. "Painting murals went into sign painting, which I hated; so I stopped it."

All the while she’d been experimenting with colored pencils. She began with her daughter’s pencils. Then she bought a couple of ‘artist grade’ pencils and thought they were fantastic.

"I was reading, studying, learning," said Wanda. "I got hooked on colored pencils and I haven’t looked back."

Her sketch books were filling up about the time the Brush and Pallet Club invited local artists to bring their art work to the courthouse during Chautauqua. Wanda took some pieces to display. She met club members Frances Wynn and Mary Joe Pittsenbarger. The ladies helped and encouraged her.

"Mary Joe said I could do more," said Wanda.

She took her advice and joined an art club in St. Joe in order to be able to exhibit her work.

The decision soon paid off. The Word of Life Church in St. Joe held an art show and Wanda submitted two pieces. She won second place for a drawing of her cat, ‘Sammy.’

"I was stunned," said Wanda. "I’d never had that kind of reception before. When we left, my husband said, ‘Now do you believe me?’"

Wanda was becoming more and more convinced of her own talent. The wife of an art director with Missouri Western State University at St. Joe saw her work at an ‘Art in the Park’ show and her husband called Wanda and offered her a position teaching an art class at the university.

"I was scared to death," said Wanda. "After the first class, I loved it."

Wanda is a self-taught artist. Her only medium is colored pencils.

"People ask why I don’t paint in oils," she said. "It’s because paint brushes don’t come sharp enough."

The use of colored pencils as a fine art medium entails much more than just sketching. It involves color mixing, layering and rendering, crosshatching and contour lines.

Wanda calls her style ‘realism’.

"There’s a debate in the art world between realism and interpretation," she said. "Critics of realism say why not just take a photograph? But I’m thrilled to be able to do it. To be able to take a flat piece of paper and make it look three dimensional."

Wanda said she’s a little baffled by abstract or modern art. On the other hand, she has students in her class that create a very loose style with colored pencils.

"It’s beautiful," she said. "I love it. But I can’t do it."

Wanda prefers animals for subjects to draw.

"Drawing people scares me. It’s never perfect and it makes me a nervous wreck. And doing things with perspective or architectural design, I stink. People tell me they can’t draw a straight line. I tell them I can’t either and, luckily, I don’t have to."

With her personal gallery full of four-legged critters, it’s no wonder that Robert Bateman, famous for his wildlife paintings, is among the contemporary artists that Wanda admires. She also liked the work of Missouri native Thomas Hart Benton and realist Andrew Wyeth.

"There are a lot of artists without big names that I also admire," she said.

Wanda makes a point to visit the zoos whenever she goes on vacation in order to have plenty of subjects to draw on. But it’s hard to take a good picture of an animal in motion. She has made a connection with other artists over the Internet who donate photographs for inspiration to their fellow craftsmen. Sometimes Wanda needs to be inspired.

"I went for a week or two without doing anything and I thought it was over. I’d never draw again. Then I saw flamingos from the Omaha Zoo. I couldn’t wait to get home and draw."

A gorilla from the Prague Zoo that she saw on the Internet site proved to be the work that gave her the greatest satisfaction.

"There was something about the way he was looking at me," she said. "It’s the only piece I wouldn’t change."

At present she is working on an eagle. She has put 15 hours or so into the project. She calculates it takes between 12 to 40 hours to finish a sketch, depending on the size.

Wanda is able to see how much she has improved as an artist with practice. Beauty, however, always lies in the eyes of the beholder.

"My mother probably has the first piece I ever did," she said. "I’d give her a pen and ink for Christmas. I think they’re horrid. She won’t take them off the walls."

Wanda says the biggest challenge she confronts as an artist is the business end of it. She doesn’t like to haggle over the price of her paintings and she doesn’t have the temperament to take commissions.

"I like entering the art contests. I like the competition."

Wanda said her husband did the taxes for last year and told her she’d lost money.

"I’m officially a starving artist," she said.

Wanda would advise young beginning painters to get out there, no matter their skill level.

"Join clubs," she said. "Make contacts. Learn from other artists. I was nervous the first time I faced a critique. But I soon found out that artists are wonderful, generous people and their opinions and perspectives can be real eye openers."

Wanda has joined four art clubs herself. She will teach a summer class at St. Joe in June.

"The more people you meet, the more you display your work, the more things happen," she said.

She invites local aspiring artists to join the Brush and Palette Club which meets every Thursday morning at the Daviess County Library.

"It amazes me how many talented people we have in such a small area," she said. "When we have the art show during Chautauqua they seem to come out of the woodwork and I wonder to myself, ‘Where’ve you been?"

Wanda and George have a son, Jack, 24, and a daughter, Lauren, 12. Lauren is a budding artist with a gallery of art work gracing one wall of her mother’s studio.

Wanda has received much recognition and many rewards so far with her art. But she has no secret aspirations.

"People enter and want to win national contests, but I have no desire to do it," she said. "I’m content with my little corner of the world. I don’t care about fortune or fame. I enjoy teaching and my artist friends."

Does art imitate life? Wanda thinks it does.

"Art is whatever you’ve created that makes you happy."