In April, 2014 renown artist, Jill Steenhuis, traveled from her home in France to teach a series of workshops in the U.S. Fortunately for the local artist community, one location was Tyler White Gallery on State Street in Greensboro. A family wedding prevented my attending, though I did purchase her book, Art, Soul & Destiny: An Artist’s Journey from America to Provence (2012, Morton Arts Media, LLC). She left me this message scripted inside.
To Glenda,
Art exists to make one taste the eternal.
May this book give you a glimpse of eternity.
The book follows Jill’s journey from Georgia to the South of France to further studies in art at the Leo Marchutz School of Painting and Drawing. Her bold decision to stay in Aix-en-Provence was the beginning of a lifelong quest to convey the infinite through rich color. Also, romance was involved. Jill’s story awakened a desire to venture to Aix to study with her. September 2021 provided the opportunity.
Learning from Jill has been both an artistic and spiritual experience. Her paintings portray the ordinary people, places and natural beauty of Paul Cezanne’s Provencal landscape. The first day we prepared our palette, an intentional ritual of paint layout and blending. The palettes are acrylic and designed by Jill’s sculptor husband, Serge.
Prepare your palette paints like the keys of a piano, consistently each time so they become familiar. Blend the primaries to create greens, oranges and purples. Find the exact complement of red by placing it an inch from the mixture of blue and yellow (green). building a bridge and adding white to get grey. Red and green play off each other in dialogue on the canvas. Be sparing with “bad boy” Prussian Blue; he will dominate the others.
Jill popped the palettes into a freezer in readiness for the next day’s plein air adventure. We painted on her bountiful property in Luynes, in the colorful Aix market, in Cassis while gazing across the Mediterranean and facing its rainbow harbor. At sunset we stood before Cezanne’s beloved mountain, Mt. Ste. Victoire and again, in overlooking a meadow of lush olive trees. Our medium was a poppy seed oil and turpentine mixture, painting wet on wet. We also visited Chateau Noir, the site of Cezanne’s studio, and other sites in the region.
According to Jill, who is a Cezanne scholar, the “Father of Modern Art” stressed to paint less through the intellect but with the heart and soul to inspire a new poetry. Nature gives forth mysteries and color is its visual language. The first stroke is the most important and followed by others in a playful canvas dance. Horizontals dialogue with verticals, and warms assure cools. Negative space gives voice to the light in an unexpected creation. Let the white of the canvas breathe through.
I chose the sunset painting overlooking the grove of olive trees to include with this blog. It was the final evening of plein air ventures, and though the setting sun escaped its usual brilliance, the sky colors were stunning. Jill urged us to absorb nature-- the softness of breeze, the scent of rosemary, the sounds and the silence. On this night I did so, and feel I painted more freely from my creative being.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of those not seen. Jill invited me to become part of her dance and through this inspiring experience, I believe I better understand my own.
How is my heart? In six words-
Through art I glimpse the eternal.
