At Tory Folliard Gallery on Friday night three artists opened new exhibitions. The traditional Summer Gallery Night and Day brought William Nichols' snow studded landscapes, Susan Stamm Evans' figurative sculptures and Lon Michels' colorful acrylics on canvas to the event opening. While Folliard has represented Nichols and Evans over a long period of time, Michels made his Milwaukee debut in their East Gallery with a rich, detailed variety of smaller scale paintings. He stopped to chat about his painting, now his profession that transported him from New York to his home state when he returned to live in Lodi, Wisconsin.
Q: Who inspired your love of painting?
A: It's a long, but interesting story. My mother was my inspiration, and an artist, and my family lives in Wisconsin, where many of them still paint. I began painting at age nine when she [my mother] used to throw flowers on the floor and tell us kids to paint them. Then she'd paint them and we'd paint them, and that's how she'd watch us and paint at
the same time. I grew up in a house where the ceilings, floors, furniture and walls were all painted, everything. I've been a painter ever since then. My family now lives near Green Lake, so being in Lodi is close to my family.
Q: How did you decide to go to New York?
A: I left for the big city with about three hundred dollars in my pocket and it cost about that much to take a taxi from the airport to the city. Luckily, I was younger then, and began modeling for Calvin Klein almost immediately. Then I became an assistant for sculptor Louise Nevelson, from 1984-1988, and painted all her wood black, white or gold. [Nevelson creates modern, abstract sculptures from found objects, wood, and steel, with at least one piece in the Haggerty Museum of Art permanent collection.] She introduced me to the world of art and gave me a lot of connections. I was extremely lucky.
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Q: Why did you decide to come back to Wisconsin?
A: I actually went blind for two years. My optic nerve degenerated and I suddenly became blind. So I spent two years in Rochester, going through numerous procedures to cure my blindness. But I painted even though I was blind. My friends put the paint in order by color, and I painted the flowers you picture in your head, like when you were a child. Then one morning I woke up and could see shadows. Miraculously, I then began to see again, after that one morning. I couldn't believe I could actually paint again. I was so….excited. When I could see again, I knew I needed to return home and begin to paint once more. In 2007, I received my MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Q: Your paintings read like small shapes filled in with brilliant color up close. Seen together, the image becomes a cohesive whole. What's your process for painting?
A: I'm a purist. I paint from life, either outdoors for the landscapes or I set up a still life inside. I never sketch beforehand. It's all painted freehand. You just start painting and have the faith to just do it, and believe it will come. Capture that initial picture, the magic. It's fresher that way. I've been painting for over 40 years, ten hours a day, and created over 1500 paintings. It's very meditative for me, I couldn't do anything else but paint.
Q: Do you always paint pictures on a small scale?
A: I paint in every size, and I have done, and am also working on some ten by twenty feet paintings. I'm working on a modern day Last Supper with female apostles. But this smaller scale still life [on the south wall of the East Gallery] I set up myself. The title is Pearls and Pears. It has teacups, fruit, and even a lipstick mark on the tea cup, and pearls run across the bottom. In the three picture frames [within the image] I reference Warhol's Marilyn Monroe, Matisse's famous 'blue nude,' and then Picasso's more abstract nude. I use pears [in the title and picture] because they remind me of the woman's shape. The female shape is the most beautiful object in the world.
