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February Issue 2007
City of North Charleston Presents Works by Ched Staats at Convention Center Gallery in North Charleston, SC
Twenty-Two recent works by Ched Staats will be on exhibit at the North Charleston Convention Center Gallery in North Charleston, SC, from Feb 1 - 28, 2007. The show is entitled, Painting, a Net for Life.
Staats has been an artist for some 45 years. He studied painting and drawing at Boston University school of Fine Art, and has his graduate degree from there. He taught and painted in Boston for eight years after graduation, showing with the Visual Artist's Union, and winning a few prizes and showing in several museums. Staats came to Charleston in the early 70's to teach at the College of Charleston. After a "time of troubles" in 1975, he made his living making woodcuts and selling them over the southeast. This period lasted about 11 years and included teaching at The Citadel, Trident Tech, and the, then, Baptist College.
With remarriage and a new son, Staats taught full time at Charleston Southern University, the former Baptist College until 1999 when he became a full time painter once more. When he returned to painting Staats discovered that the paints he was accustomed to, especially the Flake White, was no longer available in unadulterated form. He now makes his own, and parents are advised not to allow their children to chew on these paintings (also the parents shouldn't either).
Staats paints almost entirely from informed imagination. He views his paintings as painted fictions. Although he is not a "realist" as such, he believes that the image must have a solid connection with the objective world, yet the visual artist must accomplish the abstraction of the visual image as well. Recently Staats has used a digital photo or two to remember intricate details such as the woodwork at the Duke Chapel.
Staats' painting shows an amused but serious effort to comprehend the people and events of his life. The show is diverse, with people singly and in large gatherings, some cats in various activities with a few landscapes of the low country and elsewhere. No nudes will be in this show, although about a third of his images are involved with the nude as a person dealing with the complexities of life without pretense. To his surprise, others seem to see nothing but sexual images in such paintings, so they are never shown.
Staats has a work in the Citadel Museum collection, and in several doctor's offices, locally. He has won a number of prizes with his woodcuts and paintings, and he has shown in Paris and a few other places outside of Charleston. He has two married daughters and a son at Duke. He lives on James Island, SC, within sight of the Morris Island light house. Staats works at night in an attic studio, and is working, slowly, on a book about how and why to learn drawing. For a hobby he is attempting to learn math through the calculus, with some moderate progress.
For more info check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, call the gallery at 843/745-1087 or visit (www.northcharleston.org).
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