William Lawson Paintings in Art Collected by Ken and Gaynell Collier-Magar

Yellow House and Garden by William Lawson

A Yellow House to Catch the Eye.

On Audubon Avenue south of Washington Street in the heart of Irvington, at number 218 on the west side of the street, is the home of longtime residents Ken and Gaynell Collier-Magar. 

Ken, recently retired, practiced law for many years and Gaynell is a former landscaping company owner and currently instructs yoga at the Irvington Wellness Center.

Gaynell's landscaping background is apparent in the beautiful and organic design of her gardens which surround the home on all sides. The house itself, a pale yellow Dutch Colonial Revival trimmed in white, has yet another attractive feature – the large and inviting front porch.  

Some history of the house, built in 1909, was provided by Dr. Victor Vollrath, when he knocked on the front door, some years ago, announcing to Ken and Gaynell that he used to live there. In fact, his family owned the place for fifty years.

As a child born in 1916, it was the only childhood home he'd ever know, growing up there with his large family. In the neighborhood, Victor was first exposed to the practice of medicine when, still a boy, he ran errands for a doctor living down the street. Doc Walter Kelly who served patients in that home-office around the corner, inspired young Victor to become physician himself. 

On that day he knocked on Ken and Gaynell's door almost a lifetime later, Dr. Vollrath presented them with a photograph of his family in front of the house circa 1920. 

The Vollrath family looks south from the walkway leading to their front door in the photo. Mom has the newest baby in her arms. The four boys, each a head taller than the next youngest, in front of their mother. Victor, the youngest boy standing, was at the fore. The father's pride is apparent as he stands by his family's side, one hand in pocket, one smoking a cigar. A couple door doors down to the north, the wall of a neighboring building – that is, The Snug today.

The Vollrath Family, 218 S. Audubon   c. 1920

The photograph hangs just inside the front door of the Collier-Magars. It is not alone, that image of the front yard of the yellow house, many paintings are close at hand. The house and yard, with its history of that moment frozen in black and white, would find the true color of summer and a garden at the end of artist's brush. 

A Closed Down World and Open Garden.

In 2021, the world was gripped in a stifling COVID lock-down. But in the out-of-doors, a fresh air and a freedom called. People jogged, people rode bicycles, people walked their dogs. 

William Lawson did what he normally does. He worked outside, as an artist painting pictures at his easel.  En plein air, it is called. Meaning 'in the open air,' before his subject. His subject one day was the yellow house.

Lawson painted 218 S. Audubon undetected by the Collier-Magars. The street scene painter of Irvington  was not known to them at the time. It was either spring or summer when he painted the picture, as the blue sky has fair weather clouds and the leaves on the trees are green.  He painted from the sidewalk just north of the house and he peers over a high hedge onto the house from a slight angle. 

The Yellow House - 218 S. Audubon by William Lawson

The gambrel roof, the white gable end and the dentil molding on the yellow house center the focus in the picture. Of playful note, is the string of Tibetan prayer flags. They stretch across, just below the porch roof, bleached from the sun.

The painting was not to go totally unnoticed though, as a friend and neighbor of Ken and Gaynell stopped to chat about the picture with Lawson still at the easel. And as it turns out, Lawson presented the painting to her with instructions to give to the owners at a later date. 

About a year later,  the 22nd Annual Irvington Garden Tour in 2022 was taking place on a sunny Sunday afternoon in June.  William Lawson was painting in the alleyway between the same yellow house and the home just to the north. The emphasis of subject of that new painting was actually the flowery hedge of the next door neighbor's yard, but during the event, which included the Collier-Magar garden as a featured stop on the tour, Lawson was to meet Ken and Gaynell for the first time. 

They would learn of the earlier painting of their own house that day, which was still in possession of the friend and neighbor. But soon after, they would receive it, and they would commission their own Lawson painting. A vibrant and overflowing view of Gaynell's south side-yard garden at its peak season. Another commission would follow of the front yard garden, also in full bloom (top of page). 

The Yellow House Side Garden by William Lawson

The three paintings of the yellow house, together and united like siblings, in Ken and Gaynell's family of artworks. They share a family resemblance;  bright yellow walls, white trim and sunlit gardens.  The paintings would be the foundation of their growing collection of William Lawson works.

A Front Porch View and Wider World.

In the spring of 2021, as the pandemic lingered, William Lawson took up residence in a second-story apartment atop the old drug store building on the southwest corner of Audubon at Bonna. From this central vantage point in Irvington, he would continue creating paintings. His primary direction, as always, was as a plein air painter. The drive of his focus was often overlooked scenes in Irvington and around Indianapolis.

Now living on the same block as the Collier-Magars, he was invited one day, as he returned to his apartment with easel on his back, to join a group on the front porch amid cigar smoke, cognac and conversation. Lawson accepted the invitation and was to return often to join in the always changing cast of neighbors, friends and family, and even passers-by, in the shade of the yellow house porch.

Lawson would paint a scene right from the porch called Old Storefront on Audubon which Ken and Gaynell would acquire. The subject is the old business buildings across the way. 

Old Storefront on Audubon by William Lawson

They would also visit his studio apartment to look at his other works created in the neighborhood, around Indianapolis and even his earlier years spent in Seattle. They would collect his piece View from Desolation Peak, a mountaintop scene in Washington State of a fire watch mountain top made famous by Jack Kerouac in his novel Desolation Angels. The painting shows the golden scrub of vegetation underfoot on a mountain slope with a few skinny evergreens. It looks out to a distant lake and cascading blue hills beneath towering clouds and diffuse sunlight at the horizon.

View From Desolation Peak by William Lawson

Two Indianapolis pictures they would collect are Bridge Over White River, a palette knife oil painting showing the stone arches of a downtown bridge with the new Mariott Hotel breaking the line of sky in the background. And Old Northside Alley, a painting of a favorite motif for Lawson, the urban alleyway, this time in fall. The orange leaves of trees add further color to the central focus, the contrast of a red garage against the green one behind. 

Bridge Over White River by William Lawson

Ken and Gaynell would acquire neighborhood scenes from Lawson's studio including Houses on Whittier, a picture of three mutely-hued homes in shades of white, gray and pink, aside each other in deep angular profile. There is an abundant punctuation of blooming sunflowers and hydrangeas in the foreground.  

Rooftops in Winter - Irvington by William Lawson

Another picture with subtle hues of white, gray and brown – of snow covered roofs and bare trees – in the scene, Rooftops in Winter – Irvington. Its color, a green house, and in the distance, a yellow one, and blue, possess the promise of a coming spring despite the grip of a monotone winter.

In the scene Irvington Railroad in Autumn, the harmony and chaos of color changing is balanced by the precision of the receding railroad tracks and color of the gravel bed.  

Irvington Railroad in Autumn by William Lawson

Cezanne and the Quiet Lives of Apples and Pears.

Although primarily a painter of the out-of-doors, Lawson does studio work as well. His inspiration lately is Paul Cezanne and that artist's still lifes of fruit. Lawson has created numerous small painted studies, preparatory collages, and most recently, larger format paintings that study solidity, color and form.

Still Life with Apples, Pears and an Orange by William Lawson

The Collier-Magars have collected several works from this series, including small paper collages that serve as the first studies for Lawson's most recent larger paintings. And also the smaller paintings; Still Life with Pears and Still Life with Apples, Pears and an Orange.

Of particular interest, related to these still lifes and Cezanne, is a unique Lawson in their collection, Cezanne's Studio. The small picture is a vibrant homage to the master's last workspace in Aix-en-Provence, France. It shows fruit and tablecloth, and an actual statuette and earthenware that populated many of Cezanne's paintings. 

Cezanne's Studio by William Lawson

That Never Ending Spark of Inspiration.

Lawson's friendship with his neighbors, Ken and Gaynell Collier-Magar, and their patronage of his work, began on a sidewalk, then an alley, and finally on a front porch. A porch in Irvington that has inspired Lawson to paint scenes of Irvington while standing in its shade. A porch where Tibetan flags murmur quiet prayers for peace, inspired by the wind.  

Lawson was the inspiration for Ken Collier-Magar to take up the brushes again, after many years, and create a painting. His small study, loaded with primary colors, Amalphi Coast, is a painting of a place so stunning and beautiful, so universally appreciated, that the stretch of southern Italy's coastline is UNESCO listed, as of global significance.

Amalphi Coast by Ken Collier-Magar

Maybe not as renowned, or as universally accepted, are the many sights and scenes of Irvington, Indianapolis and Indiana that appear on William Lawson's list of places. His list of railroad tracks, alleyways, rooftops and bridges is a list preserved in oils and protected on canvas. It is a list he has created over his first thirty years of painting. 

The most recent entry on the list that Ken and Gaynell have collected is his View from Highland Park, painted this past fall. 

The scene is from the Holy Cross neighborhood on the city's east side. It captures the glow of a maple in October, and the tip of a green house and its red chimney, jutting in the sky.  A sky that is shared by high-rises, a church steeple and electric poles. A blue sky, and sidewalk, green grass...the inspirations go on an on.

View From Highland Park by William Lawson

Mark Diekhoff, January 2026 

Thanks to Ken and Gaynell Collier-Magar and William Lawson for sharing details and images about the history of the collection 

Dedicated to my brother Edward, who has concluded his career as a physician of many decades with his retirement today. 

M.D. 1/2/26 

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

William F. Kaeser – His Many Art Exhibitions in 1935

Near Irvington, William F. Kaeser, 1934  
source The Edge of Town  - Painting the Indiana Scene 1932-1948, Indianapolis Art League, 1989

Every Show, Everywhere, All at Once.

One cannot really imagine  a busier year for a young and unknown artist than that of 1935 for William F. Kaeser (pr. KAY-zer). The sheer continuity and multitude of his exhibitions that year is a testament to the hard work, talent, and enthusiasm of his eager youth. Kaeser was an immigrant, from post hyper-inflation,Weimar Germany, who, over the three years previous to 1935, had earned degrees from Herron Art School and Indiana University, and founded, through New Deal works projects funding, the Indianapolis Art Students League and became its founding instructor.

His first exhibition in 1935 was the 28th Annual Indiana Artists show at Herron Art Institute. One of two jurors that year was none other than Grant Wood of Iowa, the sensational new 'regionalist' painter whose American Gothic brought him nationwide fame in 1930.

According to Lucille Morehouse's In the World of Art column in The Indianapolis Star on March 17, 1935, William Kaeser's contribution to the show was a picture called Hawthorne Yards. She categorized the Kaeser work as among a group of  

“Pictures of buildings, either of industrial type that have interest in pattern and color, or of old houses of the 'shabby genteel,' Victorian type or those that are otherwise appropriate to the popular style of today.”  

Morehouse seems to be referring to the  'popular' style referred to variously as American Scene, Social Realism or Regionalist manner employed by Kaeser, and other local artists of late, or more importantly at the time, Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, its leading and founding members.

The title of Kaeser's work, Hawthorne Yards, the first picture of his career to receive critical comment, must refer to the railroad interchange yards bounded by English Avenue to the north, Ritter Avenue to the east, Prospect Avenue to the south and Sherman Drive to the West on the east side of Indianapolis. The area remains to this day as the CSX Hawthorne Yard, and was, then and now, in close proximity to Kaeser's Irvington neighborhood home. 

A Many Splendored Rubber Plant.

A scant week or so later, William Kaeser had a one-man show at Lieber Gallery in Indianapolis that was covered by the competing art critics for The Indianapolis Star and The Indianapolis Times.  On March 15, in the Notes on Canvas in the Art World column, John W. Thompson of The Times, commented on the novelty and talent of a new artist on the scene, William Kaeser, 

“Every so often a young artist pops up from seemingly nowhere and shows promise of doing something just a little bit different from the way 'it's being done.' Just such an artist is William F. Kaeser , who will open a two-week show at H. Lieber galleries Monday...(He) did not make his pastel drawings of Irvington scenes. He went out along White River where people live in most anything they can throw together.

His pastel work is new. It has a new color aspect, a new feeling and a new depth. 

His Matisse-like backgrounds, his broad strokes of sunlight are unusually pleasing.”

Hooverville - Curtisville, William F. Kaeser, 1934
source - The Edge of Town, Indianapolis Art League, 1989

It's not all rainbows and unicorns for Thompson, though, when he offers mild criticism of Kaeser's composition choices, at times, and figures,

“He has a tendency to crowd a bit too much into one drawing...(and) Although Mr. Kaeser has one or two figures in his show, he had better stick to other types of drawing. He hasn't nearly the mastery of body composition and graceful lines in his figure drawings as are beautifully evident in the others.”

The writer's main praise is directed at Kaeser's still lifes, when he writes,

"...his Corn Plant, and his Rubber Plant are two of the loveliest still lifes seen lately.”

Rubber Plant, William F. Kaeser, 1935
source The Irvington Group - 1928 - 1937, Irvington Historical Society, 1984

For her part, Lucille Morehouse comments about Kaeser's sixteen large pastels, and two watercolors showing at Lieber in her March 24 Star column. Of the work, she says,

“Suburban views, river front scenes, shacks in the slums districts and some very carefully-thought-out flower and still life subjects, together with a lively portrait of a farm girl and a study of the nude have been painted with a careful consideration of design and as artistic a regard for color harmony and contrast.”

Morehouse lists some of the artworks displayed as: At the Edge of Town, House on the Hill, Along the Canal, Suburban Church, Loafing in the Shade, Red School House, Corn Plant, Rubber Plant and Narcissus.  

She also mentions Kaeser and his wife will drive to New Orleans for a summer sketching holiday (the resulting artworks of which will figure into Kaeser's busy exhibition schedule later in the year, as we shall see).

During the following months, selections from the 38th Indiana Artists Exhibit, including Kaeser's Hawthorne Yards, would be traveling to Richmond and then Muncie. In April, the first stop was presented by the Richmond Art Association at the city's Morton High School. Then on May 9, The Muncie Morning Star announced that the show would be presented at the art galleries of Ball State College. The Muncie newspaper column reported that some of the paintings in the show were criticized by the exhibit's co-juror, Grant Wood, as being “exponents of localism” as opposed to the 'regionalism' he championed by his own practice.

A May 10, Indianapolis News article announces the concurrent showing of William Kaeser's work in a one-man exhibit in the Hoosier gallery at John Herron Art Institute and as part of the 42nd Annual American Art Exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum. 

The Herron solo show is described in two Indianapolis Times articles. The first on May 17, describes the showstopper, at least to the reviewer John Thompson's eyes,

“Mr. Kaeser, whose greatest talent is the application of color, has one outstanding piece, Rubber Plant, a lovely still life depicting the rubber plant, potted, standing on a table on which there are several fruits and a drinking mug. The strong colors, the perspective, the naturalness of the placing of the objects used, these make the picture more than just another still life.”

The second Times coverage appears on May 24, in which a photograph of the pastel The Gravel Pit is shown. In the short accompanying blurb, the artwork of Kaeser in the Herron show is described,

 “Daring and striking use of color is the high point of pastels by William Kaeser now on view at Herron Art Museum. This one, The Gravel Pit, contains the broad strokes, the patches of bright color, and the strength of good drawing necessary for a successful pastel.” 

The Gravel Pit, William F. Kaeser, 1935
source - The Indianapolis Times

The Indianapolis Star reports that a large oil still life, unnamed and not described, is the picture by Kaeser included in the American Art Exhibit in Cincinnati. It mentions other artists chosen for the exhibit, including Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Edward Hopper and Wayman Adams.

Three articles in The Indianapolis News and The Indianapolis Star, from August 29 through September 3, cover the award winners and entries in the arts competition in various categories at the Indiana State Fair that year. William Kaeser was to win the still life oil painting category with his, by now somewhat locally famous, Rubber Plant. He is a winner as well, in the pastel category, but it is unknown whether it is for one of his pictures of the Louisiana coast (from his summer holiday, presumably) or his shacks – both of  which were included in the show, according to Lucille Morehouse, in her September 3 column.

William Kaeser was a participating artist in the novel public art event the first two weeks of October, in downtown Indianapolis, in celebration of National Arts Week. A large section of Pennsylvania Street, between Washington Street to the south and 16th Street to the north was set up as an outdoor strolling gallery with the street window exhibition of work by Indiana artists. 

Once Upon A Time in New Orleans.

Often a great storyteller, Indianapolis' great art critic, Lucille Morehouse, covered William Kaeser's solo show of New Orleans vacation work that appeared at Lyman's Fireplace Gallery for two weeks in mid-October, 1935. Her wonderful narrative begins,

“Watermelon boats on Lake Pontchartrain and river steamers on the Mississippi were transferred to paper in short order, with all their interest of colorful setting and picturesque groups of workmen, as soon as the young Indianapolis artist, William F. Kaeser, unpacked his painter's kit and got to work with his pastels, early last June, at the end of a journey to New Orleans for two week's painting vacation.”  

Morehouse continues to weave a playful yarn about the long drive of Mr. and Mrs. Kaeser from Indianapolis to the Crescent City as an introduction to the Lyman show in her thorough October 13 art column. 

The exhibition contained fourteen pastels from the recent New Orleans series, with the addition of one large local scene, Old Power Plant, Kentucky Avenue and West Street, that was completed over the summer after the artist's return from Louisiana.

As way of recent background, Morehouse writes of Kaeser,

 “In was in his pictures of tumble-down shacks in the outskirts of Indianapolis, as well as the vigorously painted still-life compositions...within the past year or two...that his individualism in work with color and design asserted itself and gave promise for future accomplishment.”  

Morehouse then provides her observations about various of the individual works in the show. She begins with a pastel that is reproduced in black and white in the paper, Fisherman's Paradise. It shows a ramshackle fisherman's cottage built upon stilts, amid the zigzag of wooden boardwalks, all necessary due to the marshy conditions of coastal region a few miles north of New Orleans. Menacing conical clouds hover on high, and thrust toward the viewer, as they did the artist as he raced to finish his picture before the approaching storm.

Fisherman's Paradise, William F. Kaeser, 1935
source - The Indianapolis Star

Mississippi Levee: On Road to Baton Rouge (now revealed as) a recent first-place winner in the pastel misc. category at the Indiana State Fair. Set in bayou country, the picture showed a curving 20 foot levee and more distant houses of a nearby fishing village.

About Roof-Tops and St. Patrick's Tower, Morehouse writes, “(The work) was painted from the hotel window.” and looked out over a balcony and patio. Banana Conveyor, she writes, is an industrial composition “illustrating the industrial method of unloading the fruit that comes from the tropics.”

“Dock, harbor and boat” themes dominate the compositions, Morehouse writes.  Remaining works  in the show,  she lists in part as; Melon Boat with Side-Boards, Dredge and Train Ferry on Mississippi, The El-Lago, Steamship Sixola,  Yachts - Lake Pontchartrain Harbor, Ferry Boat at Landing and Boats Near the Drawbridge. 

The month following the Lyman's show, an exhibit of Indiana artists was organized in honor of the 20th birthday of the Indiana Artists Club. The show was to include about 200 works by about 100 hundred artists and would shown in the eight-floor galleries of L. S. Ayers & Company in Indianapolis.

An Indianapolis Times review by John W. Thompson under the rather dubiously-intentioned headline 'Indiana Artists Club Exhibit Isn't Bore It Used To Be,' begins by bemoaning the predominance of the  Brown County style in recent prior shows, which he describes as “...beech trees...autumn landscapes swathed in sunlight, or a tumble down...shack with tinted trees in the background and a soft haze over all.”  The writer may have just been piling on, as a year before Grant Wood had dismissed much of Indiana's art as "local color." Nevertheless, Thompson, writes that since about that time, and perhaps as a result, “it's all different now.”

Kaeser's contribution to the show was Watermelon Boats, the best of the pastels, according to Thompson, who described Kaeser as “an Irvington artist whose work has become increasingly popular the last few years.”

Labor + Love = William Kaeser.

William Kaeser's final exhibit of 1935 took place in his home community in Irvington, at the 8th Irvington Artists Exhibition on the second floor of of Carr Hall on Washington Street. The show was covered by Lucille Morehouse in her art column of December 9, 1935 in The Indianapolis Star. 

Kaeser displayed five pieces which summed up his busy year. First, probably by popular demand, was Rubber Plant, for a final encore (at least that year). He also showed an oil landscape Farmers, and the New Orleans pieces Fisherman's Paradise, and presumably renamed Mississippi Levee and Mississippi Dredge.

The Irvington Artists show, the final show of 1935, had a keynote talk by director of the museum at John Herron Art Institute, Wilbur Peat. He talked about 'Forgotton Relationships,' and called for a closer union between “the beautiful in art and everyday objects of utility.”  It was a credo shared by artists such as the tireless and hard-working William Kaeser – with his great love of labor that year – he was able to document the toil and sweat of his fellow man, with his gravel pits, his power plants, his river dredges, his banana conveyor lines. 

His work was a homage to labor, a depression-era vision of the American scene, the social reality – whatever you want to call it. A self portrait, in a way, the vision of an artist for whom work was both an ultimate ideal and a way of life. 

Mark Diekhoff, September 2025 (Labor Day)

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

Review of 'Stories of the Salon' Companion Exhibit to the 100th Annual Hoosier Art Salon

Booth Tarkington Portrait  by Wayman Adams? from Stories of the Salon

A Thousand Words on Stories of the Salon. 

Running at the same time and in an adjacent room to the 100th Annual Hoosier Art Salon, The Indiana State Museum presents Stories of the Salon from August 24 through October 20, 2024.

From several impressive, French Salon-scale paintings by Hoosier Group artists such as T.C. Steele, Wayman Adams and William Forsyth, who exhibited in the early years of the annual exhibit when it was still held in Chicago, to recent scenes and visions by this century's artists, the companion show presents a visual narrative of the evolution and variety of many of Indiana's great artworks and artists.

Deliberate Men and Their Noble Vocation.

A massive, even monumental, floral still life by William Forsyth encapsulates the dark, severe and Victorian tastes of the art buying public around the first quarter of last century. It's easy to imagine the painting looming aside a dark dining room table amid thick florid drapery, intricate and ornate carpets and wallpapers, clusters of  bric-a-brac, and the dim glimmer of china and crystal. Lost in an enveloping clutter, the painting itself and its subject floral, vestiges of color and reflection, overwhelmed by a dark palette of background suffocation. 

Brighter, and less time-trapped, but of an equally monumental scale is The Hill Country by T.C. Steele from the 2nd Annual Salon, 1926. A close inspection reveals Steele's use of the entire color wheel spectrum from yellow to violet in the sky, red ochre to green in the pleasing roll of Hoosier hills, orange in the fore to blue in the aft of his stately composition. Steele's abundant and joyful hues are both delirious and delicious, attributes befitting his impressionist ways. 

The famous Art Jury by Wayman Adams, is a near life-size, multi-portrait of huddled, standing men and is included as well. It was also shown in the 2nd Hoosier Salon. In the magnificent picture, he presents the history of his subject in a neighborly way like a Normal Rockwell front porch conversation of sideways glances and under the breath gossips. You sense a dynamism of mischief and competition among the men he portrayed, the titans of Indiana art at the time, as they choose the winners from the others in their art show deliberations.

Pioneer Women of the Morris Scene.

Three artists who all once practiced their craft as pioneers within the confines of the spacious Morris Building artists' enclave on South Meridian Street (later called the Faris Building) can be seen within several feet of each other at the exhibit. Sky Rider, by Lois Main Templeton was in the 67th Salon in 1991. The painting is discernible from her later work in the '90s, in that it is smaller, more buoyantly colorful, and is less purely abstract. It does possess her signature touch of gesture and action, and her bold use of line. The yellowish block in the golden triangle area of the work would become a predominant color in years to come.  

The Leaders by Ellie Siskind from the 1986 Salon, presents the namesake subjects as comic book grim reapers. The simplicity of the overall imagery, the candy-wrap colors and the five figures' deathheads are reminiscent of Mexican Day of the Dead sculpture. Perhaps world leaders they are, as the sole female among them sports a blouse that seems like a nod to Margaret Thatcher, one of the others is dressed in a military outfit and cap that recalls Saddam Hussein, and either of a couple of other wrinkly necks could easily be Ronald Reagan under a mask. Somehow this painting survives its own wiffs of propaganda, as we whistle by its graveyard, maybe due to the allure of the lurid hues and the playfulness of its shock.

The final of the three, is a  sculpture Fragile Shards / PTSD by Clare Hollett from the 99th Salon in 2023.  The work's title alludes to mental health and its stark color contrasts of black porcelain base and white ceramic shards present a bipolar unease of their own. The shards are irregular facets repelled from the core, not ordered and unfolding like blossoms, but adverse like magnetic repulsion and entropic like explosion or flame. Or appearing actually, like a box of Kleenex, sneezed at from within.

The Capture of Mid-Century Escapism.

On another section of wall are three works which hang well together. All offer mid-century views of one type or another. Harley W. Rhodehamell III, by Marie Goth, was created and shown in 1964 at the 40th Hoosier Salon. The delightful child's portrait shows a polite young cowboy, sitting up straight, attentive, hands crossed in his lap and dressed for a gunfight if given permission. He wears a getup of suede riding pants and vest, baby blue stetson, and pink button-down shirt peaking from a dark gray longsleeve v-neck like a rakish bandanna around his neck. His trusty cap-gun hangs by the ready, its belt and holster slung over the back of chair at his side. With the passage of time, the artwork operates on dual levels. The painting itself is impeccable, the relaxed handling perfect for the portrait of child.  But looking at its innocence with the jaded focus of modern eyes now raises questions. At what cost, all this wish-fulfilled excess of the TV age generation? And how on earth did it come to pass that the endearing picture of this boy escaped from the family's collection? 

The Barber's Chair by William Burton Lawson was included in the 2007 exhibition. The painting appears a time capsule the artist stumbled upon. A composition, through storefront plate-glass, that is worth more than a passing glance. A tan leather barber's chair at the center, rubbed shiny on its edges from wear. It has a massive chrome footrest, that, like the grill on a '50s Buick, seems a menacing grin or grimace. It's not really a stretch to say that the chair is endowed with an air of personage. It holds court with a surrounding overflow of interesting sidekicks and characters. Barstools from the Happy Days with foot rings for the tired feet of jazzy drinkers, a rocket age pedestal ashtray, linoleum floor and enamel cabinetry from a color-blind era in yellow and brown. Some Polaroids and a massive taxidermied fish on the gray paneled back wall.  A leaning broom, a Fedora hat. The carefully painted items are endless and intrinsic. A familiar red gumball machine, but empty.  The ashtray, the chairs, a trash can, all empty. A modern cheap plastic fan, its blades stopped.  Is that a reflection in the ornate mirror behind the barber's chair...? Maybe not. But a few clumps of hair on the floor hint at the quiet humanity of it all. The artist knows a composition and color scheme when he sees them. And in this time-trapped tableau, his meticulous hand preserves all of the colorful details for those who didn't take time to notice in real time. 

In an entry from 2001, Angel Mercado presents a sunsoaked fishing cottage that is reminiscent of the the East Coast lights of Edward Hopper. But only in the sunshine they share. Hopper was a post-war existentialist despite the occasional glow, but his early colorful row house pictures have the feeling you feel in Mercado's picture. We seek isolation as a tonic for the stress of city life. And Mercado's scene is splendid in that way. Pure sunlight and cool shadow in a harmony of mutual compliment. Primary color fields of blue sky, red roof and yellow grass are equally as melodious in their equitable distribution over the picture plane. The verve of the paintbrush, dashes out a row boat with minimal strain, a couple of blocks of black shadow, and a sweeping curve of white. The glee of existentialism, hold my beer.  

The Mysterious Amberson Age.

Booth Tarkington's coming-of-age novel Seventeen preserves an Indiana long gone, but contemporary to the times that spawned the first Hoosier Art Salon, one hundred years ago.   Before all the widespread store bought snacks, there was bread with butter and sprinkled sugar. Before there were several cars in every driveway, there were trolleys that linked far flung places like Irvington to the city, and at a conversational, leisurely pace. 

A magnificent seated Portrait of Booth Tarkington is included in the show. It presents the imposing man with trademark leather gloves and cigarette. Unfortunately, I did not note the artist or the year during my visit to the show. An online search revealed a photograph in the W. H. Bass Photo Collection with a similar pose. Different Tarkington portraits are in the collections of Smithsonian and Newfields. The bravura handling of the piece in the Stories of the Salon show is in the manner of  William Merritt Chase or Robert Henri, so perhaps it was  Wayman Adams, but he's already represented in the aforementioned Art Jury. But he did present a Tarkington portrait in the first Hoosier Salon in 1925. So perhaps it's an Adams, or a student of Adams or of William Forsyth, who also painting with a similar skill and abandon. Simon Paul Baus comes to mind, but perhaps his brush is looser yet.

In the gilded heyday of Hollywood, as Tarkington's Ambersons brightened cinema screens, Cecil Head was painting a meek and sober lamplight on a depression streetscape in our city. Street Corner at Midnight was exhibited in the 1942 Salon. A red brick corner store or bar, second floor apartments, sidewalks empty, all but rolled up. One parked automobile blends into the shadows of everything outside the lamp's midnight glow. The darkest shadows reserved for what lies beyond windows and door.

 

Mark Diekhoff,  June 21, 2025

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

Hoosier Salon 85th Annual Exhibit ‘Designed to Last’ at the Indiana State Museum

Eager to Please with Some Pleasant Surprises - 85th Annual Hoosier Salon 

originally appearing in The Ornomath Journal July 18, 2009

Many Hands, Fred Doloresco, 2009 Best of Show, 85th Annual Hoosier Salon

Classics, Penny French-Deal’s small oil was the first picture to capture my attention. The painting is nostalgic in its entirety. Its brushwork is impressionist, as is favored by most painters in the exhibition. The subject is a small town street of yesteryear. Arched windows and quaint awnings compose the turn of the century facades. Depression-era automobiles line the curb in colors bright enough to cheer up our modern memories of that sepia-toned era — candy apple red and a shiny royal blue.

Garden Chores by Ronald Mack is also an amalgamation of entirely nostalgic elements. Some charming farm girls dressed as in the 19th Century — either inspired from sometime else, formed from the artist’s imagination or maybe staged as a fussy tableau that Mack painted from life. The young ladies stroll through a vegetable garden, between the split rails, in the foreground of a slope-roofed farmstead shack through the long shadows of a setting sun.

Kathleen McMurray’s Pears with Blue and White Vase is composed not only of the namesake fruit and ubiquitous Japanese blue and white vessel, but also a marvelously rendered pewter spoon. The oil painting salutes Dutch still life masterfully, but that is as far as it goes.

Two award winning paintings hanging near one another reveal the eye of the jurors at play. Bahama Breezes by Denise Pettee-Frazier and Lifting Skies by David Tutwiler both exhibit a loose, sensual gauze of brushwork and a subject matter that inspires happy fuzzy memories of sunny holidays.

Snowy Day on Washington Street by Chris Newlund showcases the artist’s engaging and deft handling of the brush. The painting’s subject is sweet and is seductive almost to the point of being cringe-worthy, like Auguste Renoir can be at times. The chair barely exists at the painting’s edges, as the artist skillfully propels the viewer’s attention to the drama of the scene — a pregnant clump of grapes about to splash the coffee cup.

An idiosyncratic vision is displayed in the folk art collage by Ed McEndarfer, Storm Over Paradise. Decoration for decoration’s sake really — one motif is a line of Indiana-looking trees interspersed with half hidden palms.

William Lawson’s Autumn Shallows captures a natural moment of expressionist color — the bright oranges, deep blues and paling greens of an Indiana lake side in October. Despite the active color scheme, Lawson achieves an almost Chardon-like calm and harmony with the painting. The painting’s realism is all the more apparent with the nearby hanging of Marianne Glick's Abstract I. Glick’s abstract shares the same expressionist's colors but presents them to provoke a jagged and jarring effect, quite the opposite intention of the serene scene painted by Lawson.

The big, rolling bend of Lynn Dunbar’s Mighty Ohio River is painted of similar expressionist colors, shared also by her other entry, Little Pink Houses, Alton. This artist seems to utilize the colors in a more premeditated manner, as both pictures use them the same. But maybe the artist caught both scenes at a similar moment of light.

Virtuoso performances are awarded with the palette knife oil by Beth Forst, Cornrows Below Zero, and the pastel industrial impression and gossamer handling seen in The Ethanol Plant by Carol Strock-Wasson.

Dan Woodson has a sense of humor, I imagine. His My Summer Home begins at first glance as a visual riddle. The scene is a seek and find of the picture’s subject amid the visually busy and interesting monochrome crosshatching woodland branches that act a Cy Twombly camouflage. Woodson’s summer place is a tree house, with requisite swinging tire hanging from a branch, all covered in winter snow.

C. J. Fang’s Expressive Tranquility, not surprisingly, expresses tranquility. I found the composition of the acrylic painting to be among the most beautiful in the exhibit. The shapes of the clumps of marsh grass — the sky indivisible with the crystal still water. The golden ripe and fresh green shoots.

I wanted to enjoy the fabric collage Chicago, N. Michigan Ave. by Joel Fremion more. However, the work affected me less due to the inclusion of the word Prudential on a skyscraper and the composition’s starting point, the front steps of the Art Institute of Chicago and the pre-fab drama of its stone lion.

By my count, there are thirteen pictures of the traditional ‘winding road’ genre all hung together on a section of wall. However, one work among them displays an unexpected turn. To state it simply, Alan Patrick’s Winding Road doesn’t. He’s painted a winding road stripped of all nostalgia and pre-packaged charm. It’s just a typical Indiana 3-way stop. A ‘T’ intersection. As if the blunting top of the ‘T’ wasn’t enough to frustrate a winding road, the stark left/right choice is further obscured by the heavy shade of the overhanging treeline.

Pamela Denny-Rohrbach’s Bittersweet, Vanitas I expresses joy. A joy in painting, a joy in the objects and color of life, a joy in living. She’s composed a still life that’s a roller coaster of movement similar to some of Cezanne’s lopsided cornucopias. Her approach contains no shortcut. All included is intricate and wild. The shrinking jagged oak leaves, an almost obscenely decorative fabric tumbling from the table in a myriad of folds, complicated oriental porcelain, an odd King Neptune fruit bowl.

The 2009 ‘Best of Show’ is Fred Doloresco’s Many Hands. Doloresco’s skills as a painter are marred a bit by the overwhelming nostalgia of his subject. Even the picture's framing seems to aspire to imitate an earlier age. The result, unfortunately, is somewhat gaudy and overly sentimental to my tastes — a mash of Milet’s L’Angelus and similar pictures with Monet's haystacks, all in a picture frame fit for a king. The picture’s scale is admirable. Indeed it shares the ambitious size seen in the works that make up the Society of Western Artists exhibit showing concurrently down the hall. The picture’s painterly effects can entertain, to be sure, if you stand nice and close. But at a distance, Doloresco’s harvest peasants have become too familiar to excite all that much.

See also:

Hoosier Art Salon website

Indiana State Museum Exhibits

A Cecil Head Scrapbook

“If there is one thing I'm good at, it's keeping a scrapbook.”  Cecil F. Head , April 1988

AI image by Gemini for illustrative purposes only

Cecil Head Looks Back.

One imagines the first leaves of Spring pushing the fading show of fluttering blossoms,  pink on the redbud, white on the dogwood. And either a clear blue sky or a grayer wind─your choice, your imagination. And  the weather being so fickle in April Indiana.

You might not have to imagine at all, but just open your eyes and see... 

A plain little house, modest but sturdy, and well kept,  just off a rural crossroads. It's a part of town clear near the outskirts, almost country, but then, oh clock,  sparsely industrial with gravel dust and the sound of big wood chopping, until finally now, engulfed in the commercial noise and glut of southside suburban sprawl. It's a moving picture, a changing scene, on the edge of every city, but this one Whiteland, Indiana, and this humble little place the home of artist Cecil Head. 

Cecil Head, in his early eighties, sat for an interview, with his local paper in April of 1988. One imagines, in that house. 

Michael Aldrich's Daily Journal article “Whiteland painter speaks out on art” appeared in the Franklin, Indiana paper on  April 27, 1988. He spoke to Head

about the exhibition of two of his paintings in the 20th Joslyn Biennial, at the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska from April 2 through May 15, 1988. The paintings, 'A Real Bee on Sunflower' and 'Sweet Indiana Corn' both depicted the artist's Indiana scene, perhaps right outside his door.

Head explained that on the Sunflower picture, which he was painting away at in his studio, a bee flew in, buzzing around. The bee paid the ultimate price for being too attracted to the spiraling disc flowers of Head's huge sunflower bloom and was caught by the artist and stuck right on the wet paint, then and there.

Cecil Head  A Real Bee on Sunflower

By there, I mean the location of Head's art journey, most all in central Indiana, from birth in Lebanon, to art school in Indianapolis and then home and gallery association in Whiteland and Greenwood in Johnson County. By then, Head had been for sixty years making art, although a little off and on, as he was to explain, looking back, and looking up large from a large black-bound album, his artist scrapbook. 

The flow of art preserved as brittle columns of newsprint,  photos, awards and exhibitions, clipped and pasted like specimens in a way, like the bee to the sunflower. The oldest entries taking on the yellow varnish of the patina of passing time. A fresher new sadness followed by a reawakened art, and a philanthropy, and the inevitable death of art friends in the bright, white latest pages. 

The artist's fingers, tracing his path through the pages of the book, the arc of his arrow of time, grounded so near his Indiana scene, yet also once so near to the sun.

A Tall and Dark Young Man.

Page one of Head's scrapbook is a large photograph, an 8 x 10, showing a John Herron classroom with five students and an instructor, among easels.

The identities and the date are not noted on the Bass Company photo of four men and two women, and five visible artworks (three of which share the same subject of a standing uniformed man, either military or police, speaking to a group of women  in a kitchen-like setting.)

John Herron Art School ca. 1929

A tall young man, impeccably dressed in suit and tie with a thick shock of Clark Gable hair, stands in profile far to the side of the other students and their instructor. The dark stranger is leaning  back on his heals, holding paint brushes before a painting, listening on. The composition of the photograph and its grouping of figures mirrors the composition of the artworks in their midst.

The scrapbook was his own, with no need to annotate for himself. His memories could fill in the gaps. But as he is gone some many years ago, the scrapbook contains mysterious to be unraveled or conclusions to be inferred.

A Depression Era Golden Age.

Likely in his own handwriting, page two of the scrapbook is Head's curriculum vitae.

He writes that he studied art at the John Herron Art School.

He lists a number of his important awards and exhibitions from what looks to be his most productive and successful period, 1933 through 1941.

In 1933, Lucille E. Morehouse in her Indianapolis Star column 'In the World of Art', discusses Cecil Head's still life winner of the J. I. Holcomb Prize at the 26th Annual 'Indiana Artists' exhibit at the John Herron Institute of Art.

Cecil Head, Holcomb Prize Winner 1933

“While there is nothing especially original or unusual in the objects selected for this composition...” referring to the pots and jars and vegetables depicted in the painting,  “...the work has that indefinable something that makes it art. There are no mannerisms, no straining after technical effects. The young artist won his prize with honest work on a picture whose style is straightforward and convincing in its simplicity.”

A year later in 1934, in the 27th Annual 'Indiana Artists' exhibit, Head was awarded Honorable Mention in the figure composition category for his ambitious painting, 'Builders'.  Again, Ms. Morehouse covered the work in her art review column, saying the painting is “...a figure composition full of life and vigor.”  She continues, “Cecil Head  not only did good figure work in his group of seven men, busied with different tasks, but he used fresh, beautiful color, and well-balanced masses of lights and darks, that help to make his canvas an outstanding one.”

Cecil Head  The Builders

The same painting won the prize for best figure painting later that year at the Indiana State Fair art competition. To put the State Fair win in proper perspective, Hoosier Group legend William Forsyth won the outstanding landscape award in the same show. It was a showcase of the best and the brightest in those days.

Her column remarks favorably on not only Head's industrial and urban landscapes, but also winter and water scenes, in watercolor or oil, as well as his handling of portraits, complimenting the artist's beauty of color and form, and deft mastery of light and shadow.

In 1937, Cecil Head's painting 'A Winter Day' split a landscape prize at the Hoosier Salon annual exhibit held in Chicago.

But a bigger prize was coming later that year in the 'Indiana Artists' annual at the John Herron gallery, when 'Indiana Potato Planters' received the Meritorious Work of Art award.

Cecil Head  Indiana Potato Planters

Covered by Lucille Morehouse in her 'In the World of Art' column, she says of the Head painting, “ It is not altogether the depth of color, but the depth of emotional feeling, as well, that gives intensity in the blue sky back of the big red barn...”  And further, “...two tall lank-bodied farmers are walking down the potato patch...their simple work clothes take on a beauty of color, the small deep-furrowed lot takes on a luminosity under the bright sun...” 

In 1939, Head was included in the exhibit 'American Art Today' at the Contemporary Art Pavilion at The New York World's Fair. (It is not noted in the scrapbook the artwork Head displayed.)

A final glimpse of the type of work described enthusiastically by Morehouse in numerous columns in the 30's can be seen in his painting 'Along Fall Creek' which was exhibited in the 33rd Annual 'Indiana Artists' show at John Herron. The urban winter scene is presumably circa 1940, although the clipping is not dated.

The meritorious 'Indiana Potato Planters' was later exhibited as part of the 'Directions in American Painting' exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1941. 

Cecil Head's Indiana Potato Planters at the Carnegie Institute  1941

And with that, a gap, the scrapbook pages from 16 to 23 are missing.

A Hiatus of Years and a Late Life Renewal.

According to various interviews many pages later in the scrapbook, the Great Depression and a commercial art career curtailed Cecil Head's fine art output for the middle forty years of his life.  But after the death of his wife, Leverna, and an illness of his own, and after the urging of friends, he found himself more active before the easel once again.

He renewed his association with his fellow 'Market Street Artists', Floyd Hopper and William Kaeser. (They had run a studio gallery in the Union Trust Building on Market Street in Indianapolis for about ten years in the '30s.)

In July 1977, Head along with  newly christened 'Hoosier Five' artists, Hopper, Kaeser, Wilbur Meese and Adolph Wolter presented works of various media at the IUPUI Student Union in Indianapolis.

Head, again along with Kaeser and the addition of Louise Johnson  exhibited as three members of the same 'Five' group at the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce on North Meridian Street in October 1979.

Around this time he donated his favorite painting, 'Indiana Potato Planters' to the Franklin (IN) Public Library where it remains to this day.

Cecil Head   Indiana Potato Planters  Franklin Public Library

Head continued to enter works in the Indiana State Fair art competition and won a third place in the professional oil painting category in 1982.

A solo show of the artist's work was presented at the Southside Art League Gallery in September 1984. He donated one of his paintings on display, a winter landscape, for the benefit of the Art League's building fund. 

Two months later at the Irvington Historical Society, Head displayed a portrait of  William Kaeser as a young man. Kaeser, a resident of Irvington and Head's friend since art school and the Union Building days, was being honored by the Society. 

Head actually exhibited both the Kaeser portrait and a self portrait, side by side, both created in the late '20s, early '30s era.  A scrapbook image of the men and the paintings reveal little due to poor resolution of the image, however, a thick shock of hair atop the self portrait painting does seem to indicate the tall dark student on page one of the scrapbook is Cecil Head.  

In addition to the two classmate portraits, Head's seated portrait, 'The Nun' created fifty years prior as well, was also on display. 

An Overdue Acclaim and His Continuing Philanthropy.

Cecil Head attained a newfound appreciation upon reaching the grand age of eighty.

For his birthday in 1986, the Southside Art League Gallery honored Head with an exhibition and a buffet supper on July 1. 

In a Perry Weekly article dated June 26, Head explains what he paints─“the Indiana scene.” 

His Herron instructors, including William Forsyth, Clifton Wheeler, Oakley Richey, Paul Hadley and Frank Schoonover instilled the appreciation for what is near to be dear.  Head explains that he never traveled much, that there was no need to go a thousand miles.

“There's plenty to paint right here.”

The Art League birthday retrospective called 'The Cecil Head Show' was also covered by art writer Marion Garmel in her 'Brush Strokes' column in the Indianapolis News. Garmel writes, “Head...would have been called an American regionalist. His strong, blocky composition is reminiscent of Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. But (it was)...his color sense...(that) intrigued the critics. You can see that... in 'The Builders', a 1934 painting of bricklayers and masons that sparkles as though it were painted yesterday.”

Newer paintings she describes in the column include 'Sweet Indiana Corn' and 'Light on My Wood Pile', both in acrylic and pastel.

A few months later, on October 26, a slide lecture was presented by Patricia and Frank Owings of Pleasant Run Gallery, on behalf of the Irvington Historical Society.  The lecture was called 'Painting the American Scene in Indiana'  and featured the 1930s art of Cecil Head, Floyd Hopper, William Kaeser and George Jo Mess. The lecture also compared these artists' work with other American regionalists of the time; Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Burchfield, Edward Hopper and Grant Wood.

Cecil Head  Evening Meal  discussed in 'Painting the American Scene in Indiana' lecture

The renewed interest in Head's early works resulted in almost all of the '30s works being sold.

In this period of late success, Head's scrapbook pages contain, one after another, the clipping of obituaries of his instructors and fellow artists.  First Oakley Richey. Then Floyd Hopper, followed by William Kaeser. 

The sad pages, though, are interspersed with the smiling face of Cecil Head, announcing the formation of a fine arts scholarship to be awarded annually to a Johnson County high school senior to pay toward art school tuition. Cecil Head provided the initial $1000 donation to the fund in January 1988.  

Head was to live to see the the scholarship awarded.  A local community paper The Gazette on May 24, 1989, shows recipient Stephanie McWilliams, a senior from Center Grove High School, receiving the honor at his side. A young artist at the start, and an old one near his end.

Having already taken classes at John Herron and studied a summer in Paris, Ms. McWilliams would be attending Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, that fall. Her early art journey already taking her further afield than Cecil Head from his humble home.  

But his dream was to paint his Indiana scene. And he did that. And in the photo, almost his last, they both smile the same smile.

The smile of joy, a creation awaits.

Cecil Head's self portrait as an art student?  ca. 1929

Mark Diekhoff, May 2025

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.