The First and Last 'Indiana Artists' in Indianapolis

Jurors Patterson Sims (left) and Kit Basquin interact with MXYZ/MIMOSA
 by Roger Laib, 70th Indiana Artists Show, IMA

The first Indiana Artists exhibition in Indianapolis was held at the Herron Art Institute in April of 1908. The 70th Indiana Artists Show biennial was held in June 1985 at Indianapolis Museum of Art. 

The show arose from earlier annual exhibits of Indiana Artists held in Richmond, Indiana in 1898 onward. For a period of time, after its establishment in Indianapolis until about 1925, it was the same show traveling between the two cities. After that time, each city would separately organize and host a distinct exhibit of Indiana Artists annually. In about 1960, the event in Indianapolis would become a biennial event hosted by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. 

Not historical in nature, the Indianapolis exhibits, in their own time, would showcase the contemporary offerings of Indiana's premier and professional artists. The styles of the artists over time would range from academic, naturalist and impressionist at the beginning, all the way to minimalist, post-modern, and neo-expressionist by the end.

In between were periods of modern art, social realism and regionalism that were followed by surrealism, abstraction, pop and minimalism.  Throughout the run of the exhibition history, the capture and representation of the Hoosier local landscape, by various means, would be of preeminent concern to many Indiana artists.

Prelude to a Tradition.

Exploring the weeks and months around the start of the inaugural Indiana Artists exhibition at Herron  in April 1908, it is discovered that the show did not arise out of nowhere. The Indianapolis art scene of the time was not some creative nature abhorring a vacuum. The reputations of many city artists had already been established by then, and many young artists were following in their footsteps. The John Herron Art School and its museum, the John Herron Art Institute had been established in 1902, and was to host many varied art exhibitions, including some annuals, in its earliest years. 

For example, the 23rd Annual Exhibition of the Art Association of Indianapolis was winding up in January 1908. It featured national, regional and local art with pieces being lent for that year's exhibit by Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Cincinnati Museum Association, to name just a few. Of note were paintings by Frank Duveneck of Cincinnati, a talented artist and well-known art instructor in that city.  

Just a month later, the 12th Annual Exhibit of the Society of Western Artists which was held at Herron in February 1908.  This exhibit series had launched the wider recognition and further successes of Hoosier Group originals like T. C. Steele, J. Ottis Adams and William Forsyth. T. C. Steele was represented by the Brown County landscape, The Hill Country, and Adams presented several works from the area near his Brookville studio home, The Hermitage, such as the picture Winter Morning. The exhibit also included the painting, The Willows, by Dorothy Morlan. This picture was also painted in Brookville, by Miss Morlan, a resident of Irvington. The Willows was noteworthy by its acceptance for exhibition in the 103rd Annual Exhibit of American Art in Philadelphia for later that year. 

The First One (and the Second).

On a newspaper page shared with many ads showing the latest touring cars and automobiles on offer, some made by car manufacturers located downtown, an exhibition of Indiana Artists was announced for the first time in Indianapolis.  The March 21, 1908, Indianapolis News reads,

“Beginning April 4 and closing May 4 there will be an exhibition of original works in oil, water color, black and white and in sculpture by Indiana resident artists at the John Herron Art Institute. The artists of Indiana are invited participate. Works are to be submitted to a jury of selection and must be delivered at the institute on or before March 28...”

Lucille Morehouse, the art writer for The Indianapolis Star, was not yet on the scene. She would debut about 1913, so the exhibit lacks critical observation by local newspaper writers. However, an inventory of artists and some of their works is contained in an April 4 column in The Indianapolis News,

“There are thirty-seven of the home artists represented in the Indiana display, representing a total of 118 numbers in the catalogue.  A preliminary survey of the exhibit shows that Mr. Steele...has three studies rich with the warmth of autumn coloring and filled with the spirit of the State he loves and loves to paint. There is also a portrait of his daughter. William Forsyth has a group of nine works, two of which are water colors. Otto Stark is represented by six pictures. Emma B. King shows five. Dorothy Morlan also has a group, five in number. R. B. Gruelle exhibits three pictures...”

Other local artists are listed, ending with a note about a younger artist new to the scene at the time. Simon Baus, a future Irvington Group artist, the article writes, “shows two studies in oil.”

And so, the first Indiana Artists show in Indianapolis ended. Its success, or not, was not mentioned in the papers at the time, however it would return for an encore the next year.

That following year, the exhibit, not yet anticipating its future legacy, was not referred to as an annual event.  The February 4, 1909, Indianapolis Star, provides coverage of the show, with a bit more critical observation than the previous year's show,

“Paintings that form an interesting and surprising display of the accomplishments of Indiana artists were placed on exhibition yesterday...There are 164 paintings, drawings and pieces of sculpture...all of them by Indiana artists and most of them of high artistic merit...

The one thing thing which strikes a visitor first of all in looking down the long gallery...is the extreme freshness of color. It is a marked display of the trend of art during the last few years when painters have begun to give color and lights their true value and have ceased to soften colors down to a lower scale. The pictures, with few exceptions, are in unmixed, fresh colors,  and in the landscapes the brilliance of sunlight is given its true value, a piece of artistic daring that could not have been attempted a few years ago.”

Just one painting, and not a landscape, is described in greater detail in the article,

“A painting which is creating great interest is that of the late Herman Lieber by T. C. Steele. It was loaned by the German House and is given a prominent place in the exhibit.”

Portrait of Herman Lieber by T. C. Steele, 1908,
Athenaeum, Indianapolis

The article seems to reference the extraordinary Portrait of Herman Lieber by Steele that is still on display in the Rathskeller restaurant in downtown's Athenaeum, in the 'Vonnegut' dining room.

The Last One, from the Jurors.

Perhaps it was known by the powers that be at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1985, that the 70th Indiana Artists Show, was to be the last. Many local artists were caught off balance, though, when that turned out to be the case. That was two years in the future, though, out of sight and out of mind. 

As mentioned above, the exhibit, since about 1960 had become  a biennial event, showing in odd-numbered years, and wasn't set to happen again until 1987.

The show in 1985 was appearing in the summer slot, a slot shared by the IMA's other biennial, the Painting and Sculpture Today exhibit. That show was held in the off, even years. It was also a large group show, but it featured national trends in contemporary art, highlighting artists from New York and Chicago. 

Jurors statements regarding the Indiana Artists appeared at the fore of the catalog publication that accompanied the 70th Show. 

Kit Basquin, an art critic in Milwaukee, and a former Indiana art gallery owner, describes some parameters that guided her decisions as a juror,

“Qualities considered are compositional resolution, controlled technique, originality, risk, energy, and intensity.”  

She noted, among the artists and their work,

“A sense of isolation prevails. There seem to be few artists interacting in a visual dialogue with each other, and few constructing a dialogue with artists outside.”

Juror Hollis Sigler, an artist in Chicago, describes her decisions,

“I will say that tried to choose those that pushed their ideas successfully.  In good works, the viewer is not distracted from the spell of the work by either unrefined technique of by self-consciousness. The distraction caused by poor technique is self-evident. Though I would choose every time a work of poor technique, that was ambitious conceptually, over a work poorly thought out but expertly accomplished.”  

Specifically about paintings, she directed the following remarks,

“Many artists, I felt, needed to work on color. Color is absolutely basic. Until one understands the many aspects of color, one cannot communicate with paint.”

About the show in general, she sums up her observations, ending with a prescient question,

“The (70th Show) has a bit of everything, different styles, different media. I chose what I thought pushed ahead, showed originality and good, quality craftsmanship.  I think it represents what is happening in Indiana in the 1980s – a diversity, but within a growing national culture. Indiana, like the rest of the country, is becoming less regional in its thoughts about art.  For better or worse, the state is more connected with the large, major art centers. Sometimes I believe in the goodness of this, how it broadens all of us. But then, too, will we all begin to look, dress, think alike?”

Finally, juror Patterson Sims, Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, expresses himself in a more obtuse, even magical manner. He writes of the selection process itself, as if observing a seance, 

“There is a kind of trance intelligence that guides jurors as the selection process proceeds. Awareness becomes almost premeditated about what is wrong and what is right to an exhibition. A balance of media and attitude hovers at the edge of conscious thought to separate the affirmed from the rejected.”

He mentions that the processes and choices among the three jurors, himself included, 

“...were ripe with reservation and disagreement, yet they reflect – like an opinion poll made from the ideas of thousands  to mirror the views of millions – a vivid consensus about...(art)...in Indiana in 1984-85.”

Sims notes a particular common theme, mentioned by juror Sigler as an attribute of the Indiana artists themselves, here by Sims as an attribute of their art, 

“...though the isolation of the individual may be shared as a subject...(the) means of expression are radically different.” 

From a Critic, Like an EF5.

Two years prior, in 1983, the 69th Indiana Artists was reviewed critically by Indianapolis Star arts writer, Steve Mannheimer. Perhaps his measured and thoughtful remarks can be summed  up simply by saying that the exhibit was convoluted in whole and lacking in parts. Mannheimer ended his review with suggestions for possible future changes regarding the show. Perhaps someone somewhere was listening.

(Those observations are discussed in greater detail in an earlier blog about Patrick King and his pioneering Contemporary Art gallery on Massachusetts Avenue in the 1980s, and can be found here.)

With his review of the 70th Show, Mannheimer would have one last bite at the Indiana Artists apple, as it turns out. He finds a connective thread running through the show that was not noticed, or at least not mentioned, by the jurors of the show.  The headline of his Art World column in the Indianapolis Star on June 30, 1985, says it all –  Whirlwind of artistry hits museum galleries.

With exuberant, writerly finesse, Mannheimer's opening paragraph sets the tone,

“Look out Oz, here comes Indiana.

From Terry Copen's grand-prize winning Son Hero to the rambling shambles of Roger Laib's MXYZ/MIMOSA, probably the most controversial and certainly one of the worst works included, the 70th Indiana Artists Show spins with a tale of cyclonic energy.

The maelstrom or whirlpool or cyclone has been a pervasive artistic image in recent years, fluttering the neo-expressionist coattails with the same intensity it riles rural roadside cattails.”

Wow – mighty hard, the wind she blows, as Mannheimer notes. 

He relays in his unique and singular voice, a storm damage report, as he surveys the state of both the ruins and the firmer foundations in the aftermath of Hurricane Art. 

He starts with Laib's  MXYZ/MIMOSA,  

“There was mythic scale and allegory in pictures of clipperships crushed by icebergs or tiny mountain villages swept away by snowslides. Such grand drama. However, is precisely what's missing in works like Laib's huge, cantankerous conglomeration of suspended leaves and sticks, bark, lumber, shutters, canvas and a parachute.

Large as a mastodon, it resembles nothing so much as the forced crossbreeding of a house and a tree at gale-force velocity. Aggressive in its rawness, totally undeflected by considerations of craft or design intelligence, it has all the presence of a 300-pound left tackle with a high voice, which is provided by a radio in the center of the construction playing loud enough to be bothersome but not quite disruptive.” 

About the show's grand prize winner, Terry Copen, Mannheimer writes,

“In Copen's winning work, the Son Hero stands waist-deep in a whirlpool. Down by his side, he clutches a fistful of artist's brushes painted with sketchy linearity and suggesting a bouquet and/or an effusive physical release. 

Copen's other and actually better work, convenient for our purposes named Whirlpool, depicts a figure again half-submerged, reaching around to encircle then point to a smaller figure's eyes.”

Please see color images of Terry Copen's work,
including Son Hero here

Mannheimer sees the second painting as a pun, of artist as eye and seer, riding a whirlpool and recognizing it for what it is,

 “(a symbol of)...the modern quest for the steady-state pulse of the gyroscope, great inward acceleration without the fear of flying apart, excitement without risk.”

Perhaps a final two examples that most readily support Mannheimer's premise about a windy theme breezing through the show, would be work by Steve Paddack and Richard Burkett,

“Obviously, we hear the wind blowing through Steve Paddack's Monuments, Windy Day, a rather pretty skyscape half way between (Gianbattista) Tiepolo and a tornado. Two smokestacks bear a family resemblance to the funnel clouds Paddack has painted in the past.

Richard Burkett's two matching ceramic sculptures, Midwestern Vision (No. 2 and No. 3), both feature square little clay houses tipped up on a corner, pyramid roofs surmounted by funnel clouds.”

After discussing more examples that veer further off the Tornado Alley he drove in on, Mannheimer sums up his thoughts at the end,

“Of course the bottom line of all such shows is the futility of any grasping at interpretive straws. Any and all overarching theorizing must be done with the same running desperation which jurors, no matter how qualified, necessarily apply to the herculean task of making so many judgments.

Only 81 works by 64 artists are left from and initial submission of more than 2,000 slides by 681 artists. Pretty much the same effects, that is to say the same relative coherence within diversity, could be achieved by a lottery of every artist in the state with an art school pedigree.

Actually, come to think of it, we may still be in Kansas. It would probably be hard to tell the difference.” 

Controversial Aftermath and New (or Final?) Frontiers.  

Just as the first Indiana Artists exhibit in Indianapolis did not start in a vacuum, the last was not to be an end all and be all either.

Regionals, of the art exhibit kind, had been losing their luster for awhile by the mid-1980s. Certainly, turns out, that was going to be the trend in Indianapolis. 

Other trends and series would spring up and gain traction for awhile, such as the Indiana Artist of the Month series, and Forefront Gallery offerings, of local and national artists respectively, at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The Arts Postcard Series sponsored by Arts Insight, a monthly art magazine in Indianapolis, showcased Indiana artists in a new annual series that began in the early 1980s.   

Nevertheless, there was consternation in the local arts community as a result of recent developments in the local art scene. 

Two art collectives arose almost simultaneously that spring, and would join forces in the wake of the official announcement that the Indiana Artists exhibition had indeed been canceled for that year. 

Marion Garmel, in her Brush Strokes column in The Indianapolis News on April 8, 1987, notes the beginnings of one such group,

“Richard Nickolson is a small-boned, soft-spoken professor of painting, with a long, gnome-like beard. He doesn't look like the sort of man to start a revolution.

But he is angry and he's not going to take it any more.

'There is a need for us to have a voice, but not a voice that says the Indianapolis Museum of Art is the only voice for artists, or the Indiana Repertory Theatre is the only voice for actors,' Nickolson told a capacity crowd at the first meeting of the Coalition of Indianapolis Artists at the 431 Gallery Monday night.”

Garmel writes about some sources for the artistic community's displeasure,

“Among other things, they are 'dismayed' that establishment institutions got top priority at the recent forums called by the Indianapolis Arts Council to develop a long-range cultural plan for Indianapolis.

'It means individual artists will be given the shaft again,' said artist-writer Doris Hails.”

An April 12, Indianapolis Star article written by Anne Cunningham discusses the second arts advocacy group formed earlier that February, also present at the meeting,

“The United Artists and Media Exchange, representing 40 Afro-American artists...formed...to provide a voice for its members. Its chairman, Charles E. Tripp, attended the Coalition meeting. With 45 visual artists, actors, musicians and writers attending, the floor was opened to a rapid-fire discussion of problems the members in each artistic discipline face.”

Cunningham penned a later article, also in The Star, May 24, that focused on a major complaint of the local Indiana artists that spring,

“The biennial Indiana Artists Show, a juried exhibit which would normally be shown this summer, has been canceled. The Indianapolis Star has received and published several letters to the editor, written by local artists who are upset by the cancellation. They have charged that the IMA is shirking its responsibility to Indiana artists, and that they have been denied an opportunity to showcase their works for visitors who will attend the (Pan-Am) games.” 

Cunningham, to her credit, seems to have adopted the controversy as a personal cause celebre, and would continue writing about developments in her columns in The Indianapolis Star. 

On July 26, she provided an update on the activities and plans of the Coalition,

“...in July, 16 members of the Coalition's steering committee met in a Morris Building artist's studio to finalize details for A Creative Affair, an art exhibition and performance event that will open Friday night at the Goodman Building, 20 West Washington Street.” 

As a side note, the Goodman Building, at 20 West, was right next door to 24 West, built in 1897 for the H. (Herman) Lieber Company, which specialized in picture framing, bookbinding and art supplies up until 1979.

The Coalition pop-up show was reviewed with a caustic brevity by Marion Garmel, a normally cheerful and upbeat writer, in the August 8, 1987, Indianapolis News,

“Indianapolis artists, upset that , in order to house its Latin American show, the museum of art canceled its biennial Indiana artists show, have mounted a show of their own on four floors of the downtown Goodman Quad. The best thing about it is the colorful banner over the door proclaiming A Creative Affair. Nearly 90 artists are exhibiting everything from mock altar triptychs to a dark and shadowy copy of Rembrandt's Self Portrait.”

Cunningham would provide slightly more detailed coverage of the show, albeit critical as well, in her column in The Star on August 9, 

“The show affirms our respect for the work of artists like Richard E. Nickolson and Ed Sanders, and introduced us to the talent of other artists like Brian Fick. Yet, the depth of the city's art scene  remains at issue. Many viewers will leave the show with the feeling that this city has some good artists and a lot of work to do.” 

But perhaps Cunningham's most prophetic remarks are about the synthesis of artists self organizing their own exhibits and large, raw spaces downtown,

“A Creative Affair proves that city artists can organize and work together toward a common goal...It certainly suggests that the city's immediate downtown area is a perfect place for a large, noncommercial, contemporary art exhibition  space to compliment the existing commercial galleries.”

The Stutz Factory complex of buildings, was the birthplace of the mass production of the famous Bearcat automobile. Its founding at 10th and Capitol was near in time and place to the Indiana Artists Exhibition a little across town. The Stutz would become a showcase for  exhibits of the kind envisioned by Cunningham; large, raw and downtown.

In 1993, annual artists studio open house nights would begin at the Stutz, and grow into a local cultural phenomenon. 

The Faris Building, in south downtown, would hold similar events, even earlier, although on a more ad hoc basis, when it was still known as the Morris Building in the 1980s.  

Both large, sprawling warehouses would hold well-attended annual open house events throughout the 1990s.   

Contemporary Indiana Artists, in the calm after the whirlwind caused by the cancel and end of the longtime Indianapolis exhibit in 1987, were left drifting on a Sargasso Sea of sorts.  Like jetsam, then flotsam, they would self-organize in an effort to thrive, or at least not drown. 

But without the deeper pocket megaphones of the art institutions and non-profits, without the bandwidth of the official councils and forums –  in the echo of their large, raw and isolated space – would anyone hear them scream?  

Mark Diekhoff, January 2026

See also: A Homecoming for artist Terry Copen

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.

127th Annual Exhibition of Indiana and Ohio Artists

St. Joseph's, Terre Haute, Michael Neary

Granddaddy of Indiana Art Shows in Richmond.

From the roots of a mostly self-taught group of artists in the Richmond, Indiana area from about 1870 onward, the Richmond Art Association was formed in 1896, and two years later, in 1898, this organization would establish an annual exhibit of Indiana artists. It has expanded to include Ohio artists over the years, and includes both advanced and amateur award divisions. 

The Indiana State Fair has hosted arts and crafts exhibits and competitions for over 170 years. The participation of Indiana's professional contemporary artists in the event have waxed and waned over the many decades, with the first half of the 20th Century being arguable to most relevant  period in which the exhibit stood as an equal pillar and mainstay with other annual events in attracting the state's best talent, including professionals, to its exhibition halls.

Other Indiana-related annual shows have come an gone. The 'Grand Circuit' rotating and traveling show of the Society of Western Artists. The original showcase for the works of the artists who would become known as the Hoosier Group, the annual exhibition had an eighteen-year  run from 1896 until 1914. 

The Indianapolis-based Annual Exhibit of Works by Indiana Artists was held from 1908 through 1969. Originally held as an annual event at John Herron Art Institute, it became a biennial event at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the 1970s until its last iteration, the 70th Indiana Artists Show in 1985.  

The newer old kid on the block, is the Hoosier Art Salon, which began in 1925 and was held at Marshall Field & Company in Chicago. It would move to Indianapolis for the 1942 show, and continues with the 101st Hoosier Art Salon being hosted by the Indiana State Museum last August.

Annual shows of the Indiana Artists Club,  began in  1917 and continued for many years at revolving locations such as the Union Trust Building and Spinks-Arms Hotel. It moved to L. S. Ayers and Company from 1935 -1989. After two years at University of Indianapolis, it has continued from 1992 to the most recent 93rd Annual in 2025 at Newfields (formerly IMA). 

Irvington Artists, later called the Irvington Group, held annual exhibitions in the east side community of the same name from 1928 through 1937. 

Two other exhibitions in Indianapolis that were held more than a few years failed to develop generational staying power. They included the Indiana Directions (and later Indiana Directions and Regional) held as a biennial from 1976 through the early 2000s at the Indianapolis Art League (later the Indianapolis Art Center), and the Indiana Arts Competition hosted by American States Insurance from 1987 through 1995. 

Another local art event and competition began in 1994 when Phil Campbell, artist, and owner of Hot House Gallery, started Masterpiece in a Day. The outdoor event began its run at the Faris Building and its environs and moved to Fountain Square and the Murphy Arts Center in the early 2000s. It continues to this day.

Harrison Center in Indianapolis has presented annual 'color-themed' shows every December since about 2002, with its latest, Golden Ticket, just ended. And the Indianapolis studio gallery run by Justin Vining has recently presented the Sixth Annual Vining Gallery Invitational at its East 10th Street location.

It is clear that a sustained duration of 127 years running for the Anderson show, hosted now by the Richmond Art Museum, is an amazing feat in the annuls of Indiana art history. 

Past and Present, Spread Over Four Rooms. 

The permanent collection room of the Richmond Art Museum (RAM), certainly sets a high standard of artistic achievement. William Merritt Chase's, Self Portrait (in the 4th Avenue Studio), is a glory to behold. He is a magician not only with paint but also bare canvas. And he portrays not only himself, but every painter, standing aside a blank canvas waiting for something to happen.  That moment at the start of a new work, is captured in the picture. It looks like maybe he used that bare space to clean off his brushes, and yet, the promise of those haphazard marks are just the first steps of any masterpiece. It is a picture, both inside and outside the picture, of an artist assured, aside the task at hand.

Amazingly, not to be outdone, is the museum's spectacular new acquisition,  Emma B. King's, Pic-a-Back. The canvas exists out of time, out of genre – outside any art movement – in a timeless moment of sunlit beauty –  in a real, yet dreamland, world.  That such a thing could have occurred or been imagined, let alone painted with such mastery, is beyond words. 

The room is loaded with great art and artists from the permanent collection, too numerous to describe in this preface.  Suffice to say, they will whet the appetite of the eyes, to see more wonderful things in the adjoining rooms and hallways of the 127th Annual show.

Landscapes Abound.

The Lake I Grew Up On, Justin Vining

The Lake I Grew Up On, by Justin Vining, is a large brooding landscape dominated by the inky waters of a large lake beneath a dramatic display of clouds and sky. With night fast approaching, the water appears choppy, but maybe it is reflecting the dark and turbulent spectacle above. The last mute pink and yellow daylight slips down at a horizon, ringed by a thin back-lit strip of land – the intermediary between lake and sky. That narrow band of terra firma is crammed with specks of bright yellow cast from windows of the numerous homes that hug the shore and stare at each other across the waters.

A Hint of Autumn, Donna Shortt

Donna Shortt has two contribution that display landscapes of a similar mood; darkness and water in one and twinkling light and night sky in the other. Her award-winning A Hint of Autumn is a pocket of wooded deep shade at the foot of a creek that trails away toward fewer trees and a brighter light. The green and gray of the scene shows just a few spots of orange-changing leaves almost too slight to notice, so subtle is their hint.  Her other piece, Community Stars, has a night sky so thickly populated with faraway planets and suns that the little domestic village beneath is like some faraway outpost, some western remote beneath the Milky Way. With our local light pollution, we rarely get our skies so full of stars.

Staying on the subject of dark, brooding and somber landscapes, are the two submissions of Curt Stanfield and one by Ray Hassard.  Stanfield's vertical Dawn's Embrace shows the winter beauty of high horizon sunrise in golden pink tones above and through a web of bare and skeletal branches of scrub and a bed of bright blue snow. One cannot argue with the prettiness of the moment, but somehow it seems a scene, in orange and blue, seen before on postcards in Florida. Those dawn or dusk photos, substituting beaches for the icy sand of Indiana winter.  

Solitude, Curt Stanfield

Stanfield's other picture,  Solitude is altogether more effective in portraying a frozen moment less seen. Shades of grayish white and whitish gray, make up the land and the sky of this picture. The precision and geometry of its square shape are accentuated by the minimalism and simplicity of the subject matter. The straight lines of pole and thinner wire, of muted horizon and diagonal and dormant vegetation. A wedge of lifeless woods, in dark winter brown. The painting lives up to its name.

Ray Hassard's Soggy field is also a nearly monochrome. He paints a wide, flat, green-gray field of muddy grass.  Large pockets of standing water reflects the severe winter sky off its puddles. One feels a chill and wet feet when looking at the picture. 

Less moody, are David M. Seward's two pictures. This artist was seen recently in the Hoosier Salon in Indianapolis with two landscape paintings of innovative composition. His submissions here are less so, but still effective in their ability to capture and direct the viewer's eye into the heart of his landscapes with his use of light and brushwork. The greatest contrast of light and dark and the most detailed strokes of paint exist together to create his centers of attention. They are offset from the actual center and balanced by the other elements he captures in the scene to direct movement. 

Afternoon Barn, David M. Seward

Afternoon Barn has a heave and a ho of pond and hedge to zigzag toward the white of cloud and black of a shady soffit on the side of the barn.  Bonita Springs Parking has the shade of three tree trunks, two of which out of frame of the painting, running in a parallel diagonal to the white sun soaked bark of a tree thrust forward from the shady roots near its base.

Less moody still, and more playfully vibrant, are two city scenes by Michael Neary. Painted in the gregarious greens and cumulus whites of high summer, his paintings display the most idiosyncratic brushwork of any landscapes in the show.  Entirely effective in capturing his scenes, the brushwork appears energized and excited. Both Gowyn's Back Yard and St. Joseph's, Terre Haute (top of page) exude an  intensity that vibrates. 

Both paintings possess a lovely clutter of domestic or civic deferred maintenance; overgrown grass, sagging sidewalks, crumbling curbs. Two light posts in the St. Joseph's picture lean away from each other in the foreground, while the twin church steeples in the background, seemingly of firmer foot, point straight as arrows, side by side, toward the sky. 

In the amateur division, four pastel by two artists showcase the differing temperaments of their creation. Betty Knapp's two pieces, Birch Gateway and Winter Surprise, depict intimate and seasonal corners of nature where trees dominate traditional impressionist compositions. Elisabeth Von Der Lohe in her two works reveals a nature more roiling and majestic. Her technique, not an impression, but a tangible reality, almost photographic.  The tumult and crash of a rocky coastline in Crushing Waves and the sublime merger of lake, trees and sky in Summerpeace. 

Two prize winners in the division are similar works by Victoria Pope and Jenelle Burris. Both western redrocks, of needles or spires. Pope's Bryce Sunrise and Burris' Garden of the Gods paint with pastel or oil, well known and loved park vistas, rock formations as they mingle with the sun.

Figures and Portraits.

Rope Swing, Brookville, Mark Van Buskirk

Back to the Advanced Division, Mark Van Buskirk's ambitious, large oil, Rope Swing, Brookville, merges landscape with  a multitude of figures. The young men and mostly women, in bathing suits,  dispatch from their kayaks and canoes at a riverside and gather at the base of an epic tree trunk.  The technique in the application of paint, the hues chosen – the result is a hazy mythology, as opposed to a snapshot narrative. Huge dollops of pure pigment in the canopy of leaves and sky. 

A simple scene of young people swimming and having fun on the river. But captured at the moment between on the river and swinging in the air. The figures climb carefully over tree roots and muddy banks in single file. NPCs in their anonymity, no one is the hero yet. They could be anyone standing in line, backsides and bikinis, seeking to up the thrill.

A prize winning portrait, The Break of Day, by Dianne K. Porter, could almost be surrealism. The profile of a bearded and bespectacled older man, in a loose and wrinkled flannel robe, stands in profile to meet a full face of sunlight from an out of view window. The background is a featureless and of total black. The dreamlike part is the gnarled bare branches of what looks like a walking stick tree between the man and the window. Almost like wisps of steam off his coffee cup. But whatever it is must be off to the side, because it casts no shadow across him whatsoever. 

There is something about a coffee cup. John Hrehov's Morning Nancy (Indianola) is in interesting composition that merges portrait, genre-scene, landscape and still life. An amalgam of uncomplicated lines and shapes, and restrained color fields. Even the flowers that dominate the right side of the picture do so with perfect manners. As a whole, it reminds of the symbolic emotion of Emile Bernard and his Brittany simplifications with Paul Gauguin.

The Gift of Seeing, Stephanie Spay

Stephanie Spay paints a woman holding a coffee cup in The Gift of Seeing. She conjures the woman standing amid a dissolving space of orange gown, gray floral wallpaper and diffuse natural light. What the woman sees is open to interpretation. The gift the artist sees is clearly shown.

Stephanie Paige Thomson paints portraits and figures in a recognizable way. Her Portrait of Mark Burkett won a 4th Prize overall award in the 101st Hoosier Art Salon in August and has been acquired by RAM and hangs in their collection room currently. 

Old Friend, Stephanie Paige Thomson

She has two works in the the current show, including Old Friend, that like the Burkett piece is a no-nonsense portrait head within a sketchy, unfinished background. Her method preserves the early brushstrokes and empty canvas that provided the foundation for the finished likeness –  her seated figure The Old Ways Endure has the same sketchiness. The manner highlights the painted portrait subject to be sure, but seeing all three works together, their overtly similar technique makes them less individually memorable.

Subtle Stare in Secondary Harmony, Erin Smith Glenn

Erin Smith Glenn's award-winning Subtle Stare in Secondary Harmony is a head portrait with a simple background created in colored pencil. Here, again, the relatively empty background surrounding the space of the head. But the background space is colored in a shimmering gold. A young woman looking forward through creased eyelids with her stare. The face has silvery highlights on forehead, eyelids, nose, cheekbones and lips that mimic the glimmer of the woman's earrings. The silver and gold are a stunning décor. The emotion portrayed is as subtle as the stare veiled through almost closed eyes, and the dare of the piece is left to the viewer. 

The Merit Award winning portraits and figures in the amateur division  are Anna (Connection) by Anna Marcum and Love Everlasting by Jessica R. Maxwell.  

Randy (Devotion), Anna Marcum

Perhaps Marcum's more visually lively piece did not win an award but does delight the eyes. Her Randy (Devotion) is a large, vibrant head and shoulders portrait. The busy geometry of a plaid shirt, the astonishing abundance of a bushy blonde beard, and a bright salmon colored stripe that divides the background, all vie for attention at once. Like Randy in the painting, I smiled amid the colorful mayhem.

Still Lifes, Florals and What May Be Conceptuals.

Samantha Haring's two pastel still lifes are quiet and modest. Each portrays a single object on a brown clothed table against a white wall. The scenes are enmeshed in a tan monotone, warmed by hits of orange. Etched shows a mason jar and Seasoned a rumpled brown bag. Folds, textures, shadows and highlights invite close inspection. 

Aaron James Pickens has also created a still life in shades of beige and brown with Dried Corn – June 10th 2025. The flame-like shapes of dried husks provide the matter for the subject of the picture's exercise in painting jagged shapes.

Two interesting floral compositions by Leslie Shiels are exhibited. In Plain Sight shows a robust bouquet of burgundy, yellow and pink. Birds perch among the woody stems also in the arrangement, in a perspective that teeters from on high, looking down on the birds in the foreground from above, to straight on with the birds in profile at the top. The flowers survive the hidden pivot, as do the birds, without rustling a feather. 

Palekeet Trio, Leslie Shiels

Her other floral, Palekeet Trio, depicts a jar of cut sunflowers, three large conch shells and two birds. The layout of the painting is like an Italian altarpiece, with transcendent sunflowers at the epicenter, attended by open winged birds that hover like cherubs overhead. The conch shells gather at the foot of the painting like weeping women with their sounding of the sea. The color and energy lean Rococo, though, with its pastel shades of pink and yellow and blue. 

What to make of the two works by Constance Edwards Scopelitis? They are from an ongoing series called Recovery Blankets. Precise colored pencil drawings of striped and rumpled blankets draping atop wood panels. There must be a concept behind their obsessive assemblage of imagery and title. They all are named after 1960s pop song hits. Here she presents Brown Eyed Girl (inspired by Van Morrison) and Dead Flowers (inspired by the Rolling Stones). 

The blanket colors often relate directly to the song titles. The meaning of the Top 40 oldies, the incessant stripes and the wooden squares though? 

Maybe there is a basis in some personal memory or loss, some echo of connection or triggered emotion.  Or perhaps the specific nostalgia of the components were more randomly chosen, post-meaning – a sentimental tip of the hat to the machine-like efficiency of the 60s pop art minimalists, with their neon lights and crumpled cars. 

Mark Diekhoff, December 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.

Harry Davis – Select Artworks at Fine Estate Art

Time is Running Out, Harry Davis  at Fine Estate Art

Harry Emeritus.

Fine Estate Art, located just north of downtown on Talbot Street, is presenting a selection of large paintings, pen and ink and graphite drawings, prints and other works by a well-known Indianapolis artist, in the show Harry A. Davis (1914 – 2006), Snapshots.

Spanning decades, the art career of Davis began in Indianapolis when he graduated from Herron School of Art in 1938. His painting Harvest Dinner won him Prix de Rome honors that allowed for his study in Rome in the time just before America's involvement in World War II. 

Davis would go on to serve in the war in North Africa, both designing camouflage and as a combat artist. As a result of the latter, many of his artworks of this period are held in the collection of the Pentagon.

At war's end, Davis would return to Indianapolis and begin teaching painting and drawing at Herron School of Art from 1946 until 1983, retiring as Professor Emeritus. 

His major artistic legacy is his contemporary realist paintings of Indiana architectural landmarks, many painted just before the planned demolition of the buildings. His signature mature-period style displays a nuanced play of light and shadow over the architectural lines and details of his subject buildings. This technique of brushwork can offer an amazingly varied result from painting to painting, due to his expert capture of the time of the season or the daylight hour.

His major local exhibitions during his lifetime included My City, 1972, which was a special exhibit of Indiana landmarks for the 150th anniversary of the State, and Here and There, 1983, a traveling exhibit that compared the architecture of Indiana and Italy. 

In 2024, Indiana Landmarks held a major retrospective, The Art of Harry Davis.

A Biography in Art.

The current showing of Harry Davis pictures at Fine Estate Art covers two major periods of his creative life, with snapshots showing primarily the people, in figure groups, during the war time, and later, the houses, buildings and street scenes that fascinated him during his middle age onward. 

There are many examples of his artwork from the war years, mostly originals and some limited edition prints as well as several fine examples of the large architectural paintings for which he is most known. 

Follies, Harry Davis

Although not dated, the graphite drawing Follies may represent a scene from his pre-war time in Italy, or perhaps some moment of R&R during the war. The busy, festive scene of 15 or more figures including the signature dancing girls, recalls the celebratory mood and jam-packed happiness also seen in his early award winning Harvest Dinner, already referenced.

The subject matter of many other works clearly places them as being produced during Davis' time in the service. Welcome the Liberators shows a group of weary partisans resting on and about an Army truck. One clearly exhausted, leans on his rifle and the truck's fender. The style of the pen and ink drawing is fluid yet sure, capturing the brief moment of relief after a fight.  The Canteen Quartet, a pen and ink drawing, shows four uniformed buddies, joined in a song at the ledge of a bar. A wonderful drawing in a dynamic regionalist manner, the soldiers are are drawn together by the placement of their arms and the circle of light in the picture. A beer bottle and and aperitif glass, are their only audience. 

Treatment Tent, Harry Davis

Treatment Tent, another pen and ink, shows a prone soldier receiving aid to an injured arm while walking wounded sit nearby, talking among themselves, seemingly numb to the carnage.

The several large paintings include Time is Running Out, 1992, (top of page) a high-noon view of a row of two-story  red brick buildings on Indiana Avenue slated for demolition.  Boarded storefronts and broken windows signal the fate of the two buildings, joined in their fate behind a barricade of barrels, and beneath a web of drooping telephone wire.  Across the street, a parking meter – showing time expired. 

The Black Curtain Theater, Harry Davis

This painting is in the Harry Davis sub-genre of pictures he painted to preserve the image of buildings destined for change or demolition. It is a type that is also seen in his The Black Curtain Theater, 1983, shown in the 69th Annual Indiana Artists exhibition at Indianapolis Museum of Art. Coincidentally, the theater on Talbot Street, was across the street to Fine Estate Arts' location today.  

Benton House, Harry Davis on loan to Irvington Historical Society

But back to the present exhibit, a classic, stately portrait of a historical building is seen in Bates-Hendricks House. The piece is of the same matter-of-fact, frontal composition seen in many, but certainly not all, of his house pictures. He has a similar picture, Benton House, (above) now on display at the Irvington Historical Society exhibition of art in their collection, at Bonna Thompson Center. 

Reilly Industries, Harry Davis

The Fine Estate Art selection includes several widely different variations on this theme, though, in the other large pieces on display. Reilly Industries, 1996, shows the pink light of setting sun slanting over the complex array of pipe tracks, risers and storage silos at the west-side industrial facility. 

Pennsylvania Lines Parking is a painting of an unlikely corner of downtown just south of Washington Street. It's all concrete and asphalt and sky. It's filled out with a few cars, some zigzagging stairs, and a circular yellow-painted curb. Like in the Reilly painting, it's the play of the light that provides a strange, quiet grandeur and beauty to a scene otherwise overlooked or downright unlovely.

Mark Diekhoff, December 2025

See also: 

The Art of Harry Davis (You Tube) 

https://www.facebook.com/FineEstateArt/

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.