Feature: Victor L. Troutman (1944-2017)

Let Art Be Art

PILGRIM OF TIME: the passion and paintings of Victor Troutman

The retrospective exhibit will run October 13 through November 10 with an Opening Reception on Saturday, October 13, from 6-8 p.m., and a Closing Reception on Saturday, November 10, from 2-4 p.m. The exhibit will consist of 50 works loaned to the Jeffersonville Township Public Library by the estate of the internationally acclaimed painter, who passed away in 2017.

Victor Troutman lived in both Kentucky and Indiana, and spent his final years in Jeffersonville. A completely self-taught artist, his award-winning work was exhibited during his lifetime in the Speed Art Museum, the University of Louisville, the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort, and many galleries, including the Swanson Cralle Gallery, Optimystics Gallery, Lionheart Gallery, and Gallery JanJobe.

A practicing artist since the 1960s, he stopped painting for twenty years due to debilitating depression. His healing path led him to art therapy, where he confronted the conflicts and challenges that were his perceived obstacles to happiness. When Troutman began to paint again, he unleashed emotion and imagination as his brush told his story. Victor’s paintings became deeper, richer, and many-layered – a virtual fountain of color, symbols, line, and forms.

Victor’s son Michael V. Troutman, who is also a visual artist, recalls: “My father’s art came from suffering and solitude. He lived a hard life of multiple near-death experiences and lost many things and people that he loved; so in isolation, he limited his involvement with the outside world to preserve the memory of moments he found most precious, not necessarily documenting their details but capturing their sentiment. He was a very emotional man who felt deeply.”

“Boy With Fish” by Victor Troutman, Acrylic on canvas, 28x32in, 2002, Private Collection

“My father, never wrote an artist statement for his exhibits. He was a visual artist, not a verbal artist. He arranged compositions and colors, not words and their sounds. He did not believe in limiting perspectives and interpretations. His own interpretation of his art was only his personally and just because he saw it a certain way didn't mean his perception was the only one or the best. Viewers sometimes inform him of what they saw in his works. They made a personal connection, an individual narrative that no one else could ever tell them they did not see. There is a saying that ‘to translate is to deceive’ and my father knew this well. Having often discussed art with my dad, I know the statement he was making by not creating an artist statement.”

“But if, by chance, my father wrote an artist statement, I imagine this is what he would say:

“Untitled” by Victor Troutman, Acrylic on panel, 14x24in, 1997, $200

"The power of suggestion is such that if I were to tell you what I think I'm doing or what you should think about what I'm doing then what is really here may never be seen. I may make multiple statements and each one may change your perception. Make and share your own perceptions. Some may be the same and others may be unique. No matter how you try to justify or condemn what you see, all explanations and accusations will fall short of being the truth. The truth is a state of simultaneous realities we are sharing. An illusion we constantly construct and destruct. Contradictions are the only permanent structures. Art has multiple definitions, none of-which invalidate each other.

Let art be art. Do not drag it into a world of arbitrary justifications. Validity is void in the world of arts. An artist is an artist and if they want to make a statement with their art then they will do through their art, not their words. As no one instructs me of what to paint, I do not dictate to you what you should see. I paint what I feel. I cannot tell you that you should feel the same. Doing so would only perpetuate stale, trite thoughts and imitation, and false interpretations. I may present myself a certain way but that does not mean that I will be perceived in that same manner. We are all individuals with our own personal experiences. Those experiences create personal filters that cause us to associate certain sentiments with certain terms and images. Take responsibility for your own thoughts and feelings for what you think, feel and experience." 

Troutman experimented with many styles, from abstract to impressionist to surrealist to representational. His artwork is a reflection of life, ranging from the hardships and struggles of the everyday to the highest aspirations of love and the sublime. Each work tells its own unique story, and Troutman always invited the viewer to find his/her own meaning.

“Untitled” by Victor Troutman, 28x32in, c.2000, Private Collection

Schedule of Events:

Opening Reception – which will include refreshments, a remembrance of Victor Troutman, and live music and poetry performance by Ron Whitehead and The Storm Generation Band featuring Sarah Breit – will be held at the Jeffersonville Township Public Library, Main Library at 211 East Court Avenue, Jeffersonville, IN 47131-1548 | P (812) 285-5630, on Saturday, October 13 from 6-8 p.m. in the 2nd Floor Art Gallery. This event is free and open to the public.

Closing Reception will be held at the Jeffersonville Township Public Library, main library, on Saturday, November 10 from 2-4 p.m. in the North Program Room and 2nd Floor Art Gallery. At 2:00 p.m., at the Main Library at 211 East Court Avenue, Jeffersonville, IN 47131-1548 | P (812) 285-5630 | www.jefflibrary.org

“Naked Women & Naughty Words: Censorship & Self-Censorship in Public Art” Clarksville Branch | 1312 Eastern Boulevard, Clarksville, IN 47129 | P (812) 285-5640  

A distinguished panel of guest speakers will lead a special discussion and additional paintings by Victor will be shown at that time. From 3-4 p.m., refreshments will be served and guests may visit Victor Troutman’s work throughout the library. This event is free and open to the public. Troutman’s paintings will be available in the second-floor gallery of the main library building as well as the North & South display cases during normal hours of operation.  

Victor Troutman (1944-2017)

Website: www.VictorTroutman.com.
Instagram: @victorltroutman

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“Christmas Day in the Womb” by Victor Troutman, Acrylic on panel, 24x30in, 1997, Private Collection

“Love Potion” by Victor Troutman, Acrylic on canvas, 1995, Private Collection

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Entire contents copyright © 2018 The estate of Victor L. Troutman. Used with permission.

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Vignette: Corie Neumayer

“August at the River” by Corie Neumayer, Acrylic, Latex on canvas, 16x20in, $275

Corie Neumayer is an accomplished woman, but she has a soft-spoken and unassuming demeanor that doesn’t automatically claim much for herself. It is not an unusual quality to find in a visual artist, and even more common for women creatives. That painters tend to be introverts is a cliché, certainly, but the truth that is the foundation for that stereotype is that artists look inward and outward on different terms than others.

“Ripples Canvas” by Corie Neumayer, Torn fabric glued to canvas, then painted, 18x 24in, 2018, $400

Neumayer describes herself as a painter, “…who creates abstracted paintings of the landscape that focus on open spaces: desserts, mountains, lakes, small towns as well as my local countryside. My current work reflects the now fleeting beauty of our environment and the uneasiness caused by the changes in our climate.”

So while she looks outward for her subject, the inward perspective is expressed in the that balance of abstract and representational, a tension born of the artist’s forensic examination of the environment. Breaking everything down into geographic elements and using color and texture less to define space and form than to suggest those relationships. It underscores that there is often a thin line between descriptions and categories in art. Neumayer’s paintings are representational, and thus traditional, but abstract and conceptual, intellectual and emotional.

“I work mainly in acrylic and latex because it is so versatile. It dries quickly so the surprises of layering paint, or paper, cloth or almost anything else can be experienced almost immediately, and it lends itself to endless experimentation.”

In that statement the artist confirms the itch for discovery, but there is also a great pleasure in the tactile surface quality that documents the painter’s hand. The impasto crafted from brush, knife, and perhaps other tools, give a visceral kick to the viewer – paint is always seductive, has recently given way to a collage-like layering of canvas material.. 

On September 29, Neumayer will be part of the Louisville Visual Art’s Juried Exhibit in the 2018 Portland Art & Heritage Fair. The exhibit will be available for viewing at the Marine Hospital from 11am-5pm. Jury prizes will be awarded at 2:00pm.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: MA in Teaching, University of Louisville; BA, Georgetown College (Georgetown Kentucky); also attended Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, Georgia), California State University-Long Beach, and St. Cloud College (St. Cloud, Minnesota)
Gallery Representative: Pyro Gallery
Website: www.corieneumayerpaintings.com

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“Hot September” by Corie Neumayer, Acrylic, latex on canvas, 20x24in, 2018, $450.

“Tree Line” by Corie Neumayer, Paper, acrylic, latex paint on canvas, 18x24in, 2018, $400

“River Snow Latex”, Acrylic on canvas, Paint applied with rollers and brushes 24x30in, 2018, $600

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

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Vignette: Ewa Perz

“Blue River” by Ewa Perz, Oil on canvas, 48x36in, 2018, $2900

Ewa Perz is from Gdansk, Poland, and her memories of her hometown and the surrounding landscape reaffirm some of the Cold War cliché. In an April 2018 interview with LVA’s Artebella On The Radio, she described growing up in Poland: “…(it) is very gray. There are not as many colors as you would think in the western world. And when I first moved (1989) it was to Mexico, and the primary colors were everywhere, I was surrounded by color.”

The sudden immersion into such a contrasting culture affected Perz deeply, and it would ignite a passion for painting, but not until some 15 years later, when she had relocated to Louisville, Kentucky and became involved with Susan Howe’s Mudpies Studio on the far-east side of the city. Her first paintings resurrected the love of primary color, but in the years since, she has developed a much more sophisticated palette, and although she still creates representational images, a good deal of her most recent work is a subtle exploration of the intermingling properties of light and space. Water surfaces fascinate her, the abstract, mercurial surfaces of lakes and streams revealed in diffuse sunlight.

“Reflection” by Ewa Perz, Oil on canvas, 48x24in, 2018, $2200

“Color is very important to me,” explains Perz. “I paint a variety of subjects, but they are not as important to me as color. To me, color is what bares the essence of an object, and that is what I seek to portray.”

Educated as a scientist, Perz worked as a chemist, and one can only surmise how much theory lies behind her approach to painting. Does her scientifically trained mind deconstruct the chemical relationship in medium? Does she study the colors according to formula? The way Perz talks about her process, the answer seems to be that the analytical side of her brain has moved aside to make way for the artist’s intuitive journey of discovery. “Simplicity is definitely the direction in which I want to continue.”

On September 29, Perz will be part of the Louisville Visual Art’s Juried Exhibit in the 2018 Portland Art & Heritage Fair. The exhibit will be available for viewing at the Marine Hospital from 11am-5pm. Jury prizes will be awarded at 2:00pm.

Perz has also studied with contemporary masters Felo Garcia, David Laffel, Milt Kobayashi. Her paintings are currently on display in Revelry Gallery Boutique, European Splendor and Galerie Municipale (France). Her paintings have been featured in galleries in Miami, as well as Mexico, and France.

Currently, Perz is exhibiting The Kentucky I Love in the NULU AC Hotel, Louisville, KY, through November 2018.

Recent Exhibitions: 

April 2018 - Artist Showcase in Churchill Downs
April 2018 - Feature Artist in LVA SquareArt
November 2017 - “Water Strokes”- solo show at Reverie Gallery Louisville Ky
September 2017 - Ewa Perz at Butchertown Social solo show
December 2016 - Spectrum - group show at Art Basel Miami
October 2016 - First Place in “Metamorphosis” art completion by LVA
October 2016 - Mural for Holiday Manor Kroger
September 2015 – “Lush” solo show Ann Tower Gallery, Lexington Ky
September 2014-2016 – Revelry Gallery; Louisville, KY
December 2014 - Global Ties Miami Exhibition; Art Basel week; Miami, FL
May 2013 – ‘Dons d’Artistes’ exhibition; Antibes, France
2011-2012 – Un Oeil Ouvert; Loubet, France
May 2011 – Galerie Municipale; Antibes, France
Summer 2011 – Artist residency; Antibes, France
December 2, 2010 – La Dolce Art Gallery; San Jose del Cabo, BCS, Mexico 

Hometown: Gdansk, Poland
Education: Masters in Plant Physiology
Website: http://www.ewaperzgallery.com
Gallery Representation: Revelry Gallery, (Louisville) Ann Tower Gallery, (Lexington), Gallery Municipale, (Antibes, France)

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“Women Head Idea” by Ewa Perz, study in oil, 2018, NFS

“Bergman-unfinished copy” by Ewa Perz, OIl on canvas, 2018

“Run” by Ewa Perz, Oil on canvas, 48x72in (triptych), 2018, $2200

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

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Vignette: Pat Allison

"Louisville's Ohio", by Pat Allison, Oil on canvas, 28x22in, 2018, $500

As a student in Jefferson County Schools, Pat Allison was invited to participate in after-school, free, art classes in the fifth and sixth grades at Southern Junior High School.  We’re guessing that makes her an alumnus of Louisville Visual Art’s Children's Fine Art Classes. During one summer after sixth grade her parents paid for art classes at the Louisville Art Center, which was an earlier name for LVA.

"NYC’s Central Park” by Pat Allison, Oil, 12x16in, Private collection

Yet in high school, Allison changed direction, and studied Speech and Theatre at Indiana University Bloomington. In 2019 she retired from teaching at Louisville’s DuPont Manual/ Youth Performing Arts School where she founded its New Works Festival and the Young Writers Workshop. Since her retirement after 43 years of teaching, she began to devote more of her energies once again to painting.

So is Allison’s preoccupation with structural pattern in her work the natural result of a lifetime of teaching? The organization and routine of the classroom and developing new educational curriculum must have influenced her in this regard. The network of steel support in the bridge across the Ohio River is echoed in the freeway below and contrasted against the vertical lines of the architecture we see beyond, and the more subtle organic patterns of nature are present in the wintry trees and stylized examination of the lily.

Allison has been studying oil painting for the past twelve years with Winnie Harrison at the Preston Art Center in Louisville.

She was selected for the Jewish Community Center’s 2010 Emerging Artist Exhibition, and was juried into the Louisville Woman’s Club Exhibitions in 2015, 2016, & 2017. She has written and illustrated two children’s picture books, Butterfly and Roberto Robot

On September 29, Allison will be part of the Louisville Visual Art’s Juried Exhibit in the 2018 Portland Art & Heritage Fair. The exhibit will be available for viewing at the Marine Hospital from 11am-5pm. Jury prizes will be awarded at 2:00pm.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: Degree in Speech & Theatre, Indiana University
Facebook: PatAllisonPaintings

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"Exploring Maine’s Coast" by Pat Allison, Oil, 18X24, $650

"Lily’s Birth" by Pat Allison, Oil on canvas, 9x12in, 2018, $350

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

Are you interested in being on Artebella? Click here to learn more.

Vignette: Margaret Bromley

"Where's the Belle?" by Margaret Bromley, Oil on Canvas, 19X30in (framed), 2017, $1000

The moment an individual begins creating is almost certainly the act of a child; picking up a crayon, or perhaps the sublime pleasure of slipping your fingers into finger paint for the first time, seeing the possibilities of line, shape, texture at its most elemental level. Pure instinct.

So many of us strive to recapture such instinctive pleasure again, after the process of becoming an “adult” has raised innumerable impediments, and it is not at all uncommon to find artists who retired from a professional career and then rediscovered that motivation to make art once again.

Margaret Bromley is just such an artist, taking her first drawing class at the local Preston Art Center in 2001, one month after retiring from the University of Louisville as its Media/Marketing Coordinator in the Development Department.

She has studied in workshops under Jerry Stitt of Sausalito, California, Nancy Nordloh Neville of Cincinnati, Ohio and went to Umbria, Italy with students under the leadership of Janice Russell Beck of Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. Locally she has studied with artists Susan Howe, Judy Warren, Sue Hinkebein, and Joyce Sweet-Bryant.

"Winning Trifecta?" by Margaret Bromley, Oil on canvas, 12X18in (gold leaf frame) 2009, $350

Bromley has tried her hand at many styles, techniques, and mediums, but landscapes with a natural style seem to be her strong suite. In “Where’s the Belle?” she gives us an unconventional perspective on an iconic event during one of the most festive, tourist-dominated weeks on the Louisville calendar. There is no shortage of artists painting or photographing Kentucky Derby events, horses, bourbon, and hats are common motifs - Bromley has not ignored these (“Winning Trifecta”), but there is an unexpected power in how she portrays this simple community of locals waiting to view the Belle of Louisville during the Great Steamboat Race, a signature event that takes place three days before the Most Famous Two Minutes in Sports. Far away from the concentration of fancy crowds, these ordinary Louisvillians have come down directly to the shoreline of the Ohio River to get an up close view of the old-fashioned steamboats as they move along the river. 

The unfussy approach employed by Bromley emphasizes atmosphere and a sense of place for any tendency to overwork the details. We can sense the camaraderie and easy understanding of local tradition that has brought these men together on a late spring afternoon.

Bromley has received Honorable Mentions for her work at the Kentucky State Fair on two different occasions and shows locally at Koi Gallery, Primo Oil and Vinegars’ Gallery, and has note cards at Regalo and Cartwells as well as the previous mentioned galleries.

On September 29, Bromley will be part of the Louisville Visual Art’s Juried Exhibit in the 2018 Portland Art & Heritage Fair. The exhibit will be available for viewing at the Marine Hospital from 11am-5pm. Jury prizes will be awarded at 2:00pm.

Hometown:
Education: University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Website:

“Spello, Italy” by Margaret Bromley, Oil on canvas, 10x14in, Private Collection, Giclee available, $195

"Fisherman Bill" by Margaret Bromley, Oil on canvas, 8x10, (floating frame), $300

"Vermont Herb Garden " by Margaret Bromley, Oil on canvas, 8x8in, $225