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July Issue 2005
Beaufort Art Association
in Beaufort, SC, Features Works by Gay Torrey
by Claudia Cornett
What
makes a Renoir a Renoir, a Degas a Degas or a Torrey a Torrey?
Beaufort Art Associations new featured artist, Gay Torrey, can
at least answer the last part of that question. "I'm like
a chameleon," Torrey says. "I like change and variety."
Visitors to Torrey's exhibit at the Beaufort Art Association Gallery
in Beaufort, SC, can expect to see diverse media and lots of color.
Her experiments with collage, acrylics and watercolor result in
vivid still lifes, people pictures and Torrey's - special love,
landscapes - especially dunes.
The show features mostly
acrylics and watercolors. Of particular interest is her Creation
Series of watercolors. These are non-representational works
which were made with dried paint pieces sprinkled on the paper
and then sprayed with water. Torrey then uses gauze to manipulate
the paint.
A native of Key West, Torrey thinks she inherited art talent from
her grandfather. She can't remember when she wasn't sketching
and has always enjoyed the part of the art process that is just
using what I have on the palette and transferring the medium to
paper or canvas. However, Torrey didn't take her first class until
she had four children. That was over thirty years ago. That first
class led to others and her passion motivated her to find time
to paint, even when the four children became nine. I just learned
to paint around child raising, she explains.
Torrey is married to a marine so she lived in eight states before settling in Beaufort ten years ago. The move to Ladys Island, SC, proved to be the stimulus for her to take art more seriously. With her children on their own Torrey finally had time to devote herself to capturing the light and color of the low country, which she compares to the natural beauty of Key West.
Torrey stresses the importance of taking pride in taking a new view and trying the untried. She says it is daring to be different and a "can do" attitude gives her direction and energy. Starting with paintings of houses and trees of Florida, she has made every effort to do her own thing. It is a challenge to re-create an image and to make it unique. Every work is new, different and original even if you work with a group who all are doing the same model.
Torrey's favorite artists are impressionists so it isn't surprising that she is fascinated by light and color. Her art reflects a personality filled with playfulness and joy, too. For example, one painting in the show, Something to Crow About, depicts a brightly feathered cock so boldly puffed up that the viewer has to smile.
Torrey sees herself as half self taught and half instructed and credits an increased complexity in her art to formal study coupled with gleaning her own technique. For example, she learned the creativity enhancing strategy of "go away and come back". She disciplines herself to paint and then removes herself from the work three times. In particular, she thinks this has added a lot to her collages because the outcome is always unknown in this medium.
Torrey is a proponent of practice and is quick to point out that the more you paint, the better you get. She tackles the problem of getting started in several ways. "I look at the work of other artists," says Torrey. "For example, abstracts really make you see differently." She also takes time to look for designs with unusual lines and colors. Another starter she uses is photographs. She takes hundreds and keeps them for idea prompts. "People, places, scenes - all of it," says the artist. "I just go for it!"
Torrey encourages aspiring
artists to not be shy. 'Don't be intimidated by a blank canvas
or paper and do not be afraid of color." She generally sketches
before she paints. Torrey emphasizes that it isn't a matter of
creating something from nothing, but recreating images in new
ways. For example, she takes a photograph and turns it upside
down or sideways or she'll just use a piece of the photograph.
"Maybe there is a mountainside where one spot has lines and
color, says Torrey. "I'll just paint that part where the
stones divide and combine that with images from other sources."
Tools are another area Torrey leaves open to experimentation.
While she has favorite brushes, she also paints with wadded up
saran wrap and tissue paper.
The collage process is a different matter. Torrey does not sketch,
but lets the textures, colors and lines lead the way as she tries
out compositions. She points out that materials change the process.
For her collages she makes her own materials and especially likes
to use rice paper stained with inks, acrylics and everyday paints
like coffee. She also tears up lace, cheesecloth and even rips
up her own paintings.
"Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't," Torrey admits. "Every painting isn't a winner. I just put those aside and come back to them later." Which paintings are her personal winners? In this new exhibit visitors will see an acrylic of Father David which Torrey loves because it is so colorful. The priest is wearing tribal garments, probably from Ghana. She also is still very fond of her Key West paintings and the show includes several. Finally, there are flowers. Torrey's florals are striking because of the brilliant colors and unusual backgrounds filled with stripes and squares that contrast with the organic shapes of the flowers.
Torrey's goal is to give people something that will make them stop and look. If it is too simple they will just pass over it. She shares this goal with most artists who want to provoke viewers to think differently or be puzzled by the process used to create the final work. "It's not about replicating images," says Torrey. "I want it to be interesting. I want people to say, Look what she did!"
How does Torrey know when a painting is finished? She thinks it takes time to really have a sense of completeness. She tells about a painting of roses she sold to a bank only to realize the frame and background were all wrong. "Of course, it was too late," she laughs, "That's what happens in the milieu of painting."
Torrey is a prize-winning artist who earned her first recognition with a pastel portrait of an actress. Recently she was accepted into the South Carolina Watercolor Society's Traveling Exhibit. Her winning watercolor is an abstract with bright acrylics. She applied the paints to paper and then tried to discover what was in the colors by pressing bubble paper into the paint. That section became the center of the work to which she then added inks. Torrey's work is among a select group of thirty paintings which begin their tour in Newberry, SC, and arrive in Beaufort in Nov, 2005.
In addition to painting,
Torrey has made time to serve in many leadership roles in the
Beaufort Art Association including president and gallery chair.
Now, nine children, thirteen grandchildren and three great grandchildren
later, she seems unstoppable. "I plan to keep on painting
and trying all I have learned," says the artist. "I
want to do Gay Torrey and not anyone else."
For more information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings,
contact the BAA Gallery at 843/379-2222 or visit their website
at (www.allbeaufort.com/baa/).
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