Theodore Clement Steele – Indiana's Master Impressionist from Munich to Brown County – Part Two

On the Road, 1909, T. C. Steele

To Seize the Beauty of Earth.

That T. C. Steele remained active and productive until the end of his life is indisputable. A February 25, 1926, Indianapolis News article about a then current exhibition in Bloomington at his Indiana University studio verifies his most recent batch of works,

“A special exhibition of winter landscapes painted from the window of his cottage (on campus) this winter by Prof. T. C. Steele...will be on display in the university studio next week. About twenty-five pictures will be shown for first time, including a number of autumn landscapes.

...Professor Steele has completed about fifteen pictures this winter, which season, he says, has been favorable for his work.”

One such work, possibly, is the painting The Bridge Over the Jordan River, 1925, included in the current Brown County Art Gallery show. The work is the latest in date of all the artworks presented in the current show, and the only painting from 1925.

It shows a winter scene with a stream and a few trees in the muted fogs of the season. Its colors are cool, almost moist, a lavender and gray, a soft green, and some warmer browns.  

The Bridge Over the Jordan River, 1925, T. C. Steele

(The exact view of the Jordan River, renamed Campus River in 2020, on the I. U. campus can be seen today in this image taken recently although in the spring or summer. The three trees most in the foreground have grown in size and survive the years.)

T. C. Steele view of Jordan River as it appears today
photo: https://williamscreekmgt.com/project/iu-campus-river-restoration/

In May 1926, just after the death of his fellow artist, and Hoosier Group member, Otto Stark on April 14, in Indianapolis at the age of 67, T. C. Steele was to have a final one-man exhibition. Held at the H. Lieber Company gallery in Indianapolis, the show was reviewed by Lucille Morehouse in The Indianapolis Star and an unnamed writer in The Indianapolis News in the first weeks of May.

from May 15, 1926 Indianapolis Star

The News article appeared first on May 8, and reads, in part,

“Not for some time has there been hung a group of paintings containing such variations of emotions, both gentle and grim, as are evidenced in the nineteen canvases by Theodore C. Steele on exhibition in the H. Lieber Company gallery. Each picture holds before the spectator a mood which expresses itself with definite intent. The artist was not satisfied with the portrayal of a few of these moods. He has swept with his brush a wide horizon and with quiet power has captured in paint a throbbing individuality.

The veteran artist, now in his seventy-ninth year, seemingly has poured into this group of pictures the accumulated knowledge  and skill acquired in a long apprenticeship to the beautiful.”

The writer then describes the span of the creation for the paintings, and their overall effect on the viewer,

“...the majority of the paintings are of recent creation. Twelve were painted in 1925, one in 1926, and of the remaining six, four are undated, one completed in 1923 and the other in 1912. The pictures give the impression that the artists is at peace with himself and the world and that he has launched himself  into a new and vital phase of production.”

The writer describes several of the works included, and also quotes the artist from a recent talk on art appreciation at the Fort Wayne Art School one year before. Steele said, in part,

“I often speak of appreciation both of nature and art, as it is the art of seeing beautifully. There is such an art. It is an attitude of mind. It is not a matter of intellect so much as of sensibility, feeling rather than thought. A work of art is not created in cold blood. There must be the fire of emotion to warm the life of art, and then not a literal representation, but a much greater thing. It is the scene plus the emotion of the artist. Happy is the painter if he can convey to the observer the joy he feels in creation.  To him the beauty of earth is real. He is happy if he can seize and make permanent that which passes so quickly.”

The writer concludes with brief descriptions of some of the paintings, including Autumn Gold, Across Country, From Dewar's Hill and The Big Oak, writing that all the works possess great decorative charm, but something more,

“Unlike most decorative art...they appeal to more than the senses. There is present (in the paintings) poetry of thought as well as beauty of color and simple balance of design.”

from the May 8, 1926, Indianapolis News

In her column the next day in The Indianapolis Star on May 9, Lucille Morehouse contrasts Steele's most recent paintings, which predominate the exhibit, with his earlier Brown County style,

“(The latest works)...have a serenity and calm that impress us with the meaning of a long life  spent in the pursuit of beauty. Running through all there is, too, the same gentle dignity that has always marked Mr. Steele's work. In the color there is a mellow richness of tone that speaks of long years of loving companionship with brush and palette. A feeling of wide, open spaces, where one looks far across the fields and into the sky high overhead, is the result of a skillful handling of atmospheric effects and of perspective...”

Morehouse also comments on several works individually while naming others in the show including Stormy Weather – Salt Creek Valley, Winter Afternoon – Jordan Field, Wild Roses and Larkspur, On Axtell Road and In June.

In the same column, Morehouse writes that T. C. Steele recently visited the Indianapolis exhibit of Richmond-area painter, John Elwood Bundy at the Fine Arts Studio on the top floor of the Pierce Building in the city. 

Her remarks document that Steele, in his old age, in addition to his considerable productive prowess, possessed a continuing curiosity in the overall art world, and a sympathetic and generous nature,

“T. C. Steele paid a visit to the gallery last Tuesday and expressed his admiration for the landscape with patches of snow, entitled Winter Haze also for On the Old Homestead the canvas that won the ...Foulke prize... at Richmond.”  

Lucille Morehouse was also compelled to ask a question in her column. A question that arose as a result of T. C. Steele's always evolving art. She is pondering the changes she has observed in the most two recent exhibits as compared to the past few years,

“The paintings that represented Mr. Steele in the Hoosier Salon earlier in the spring, seemed to emphasize a different phase of his art than the one which we have been familiar for several years; and a large number of the pictures now on display at Lieber's...(share the same characteristics as those in the Hoosier Salon). Whether it means an entirely new period of his art, or is reminiscent of earlier work before he began to paint in Brown County, might be best decided by a retrospective exhibition. And that raises the question, why not have a retrospective exhibition of the art of T. C. Steele?” 

  

True Blue.

Days before T. C. Steele was to die, he was mentioned in what would be his last Indianapolis newspaper coverage of his life.  In the July 18, 1926, Indianapolis Star, in the recurring column From Down in the Hills o' Brown County by Frank M. Hohenberger, T. C. Steele is quoted from the same Fort Wayne Art School address on art appreciation the previous fall mentioned above. 

Morning, 1917, T. C. Steele

As Hohenberger introduced, 'T. C. Steele, dean of Indiana artists, said,'

“Man is by nature a materialist – an artist is one who can see through this materialism and discover the spirit of things.”

Hohenberger continued his summary of the talk, which included a startling, and turns out, accurate  prediction by Steele,

“Mr. Steele predicted that the United States would soon become the art center of the world, saying this country already excelled in contemporary architecture.” 

And the final words in the column, and about T. C. Steele while he was still living,

“He expressed approval of the movement to teach art in the school, saying he believed every child has an inherent sense of beauty which may be drawn out under proper tutelage.”

Less than a week later, the same paper, on page one above the fold, would be carrying the sad news of the death of T. C. Steele at age 79,

“In his home among the hills of Brown County, the House of the Singing Winds, Theodore Clement Steele, honorary professor of painting at Indiana University and one of the leading Hoosier artists, died at 8:30 o'clock (last night).” 

July 25, 1926 Indianapolis Star

The obituary and tribute continued over two pages of the paper and included a detailed biography and the reactions of fellow artists.

Just a day later, news of his burial service and internment at his Brown County Singing Winds property were reported. Lucille Morehouse provides a long eulogy in her column in The Star on July 26. 

About his life's work in painting. She writes,

“He was faithful always to nature, to our native hills and valleys, with their woodlands and meadows and winding streams. He would never twist out of shape a bit of landscape for the sake of decorative pattern. In fact he seldom cared to make his landscapes compositions of the so-called decorative type, other than being true to nature.”

About his skies, Morehouse writes,

“Tragic skies, with great sweeping cloud masses, made little appeal to his brush. In an occasional painting one finds the sky to be almost unbelievably blue, but to those who know Brown County year in and year out, this is true to nature.”

The House of the Singing Winds, Winter Afternoon, 1922, T. C. Steele

 About Steele's distances and the atmosphere in his paintings, and the use of figures, she observes,

“The mists that hang over distant hills were seen by Mr. Steele in predominant violet tones... 

Always there is a fine feeling for light and atmosphere in Steele's pictures. In all seasons and at all hours of day it is a play of light through atmosphere that gives vibrancy and beauty to his landscapes.

Not often did he introduce figures into his landscape compositions. Occasionally there are groups of cattle that stray through the wood pastures...

Mr. Steele was fond of wide, open spaces. One never has the feeling of being shut in among the hills; instead, there is always the feeling of freedom as one looks out or across or up...”

 

detail of The Whitewater, 1904, T. C. Steele

The Greater Thing.

One can see in the current show at Brown County Art Gallery, that 'greater thing' T. C. Steele was speaking about –  the feeling rather than thought, the fire of emotion, the warmness of life and the joy.   

Steele's soul must have quivered when he stumbled upon certain scenes of beauty at particular moments of light and atmosphere, bathed in the striking colors of nature at particular fine moments.  Those certain scenes live and breath yet, on the walls in this exhibit. 

There is a darkness and mystery, a chill, in the early picture The Rocky Stream, 1884. A brooding hope in After the Rain, 1890, with its open, albeit muddy, road and green fields beneath roiling gray storm clouds with just a bit of lightening sky.

Winter Scene (Chicago River), 1900, T. C. Steele

Around the time of the death of his first wife, a somber poetry pervades works such as A Quiet Forest  and Winter Scene (Chicago River), both 1900. 

The Forest shows a foggy morning in winter devoid of  most color, in a meadow clearing in the woods amid a stand of sycamore. The waning green of weeds, the leaching red/brown of beech tree leaves seem wrapped in a blanket of winter gray of both sky and receding hillside. 

A similar fog persists in the nautical Chicago River scene, but with a preponderance of sky and water, it refracts of lilac blue hue overall, an interplay of the misty atmosphere, the emission of smoke from the boat's stack and the play of sky on water's surface. A somber solitude is felt in these paintings.

With the new century, and several changes in scenery, one can sense a new joy in T. C. Steele. His paintings shimmer and vibrate with color and radiate light to dizzying effect. 

Just three such examples of the many in the show from this euphoric period of about ten years are Rancho Cucamonga, 1902, The Oregon Coast, 1903 and Brookville From Across the River, 1905. 

It is almost as if Steele bottled the West Coast and brought it back with him after his journey. But in truth, he had already seen such light, in Indiana, before the trip, as evidenced by such works as Brookville and Brookville Landscape, Sycamores, both 1901. 

 

Brookville Landscape, Sycamores, 1901, T. C. Steele

Perhaps Steele is best known for the Brown County scenes he painted in the last decades of his life. The exhibit has many examples of several sub-genres of work he produced during those years. Autumn and winter scenes, of course, in stunning pictures such as On the Road, 1909 (top of page), Autumn in Brown County, 1914 and The House of the Singing Winds, Winter Afternoon, 1922.  

Floral Still Life, 1921, T. C. Steele

High summer scenes and garden and flower pictures are also plentiful as depicted in Country Road in Summer, 1914, Garden's Bounty, 1915 and Child with Flowers, 1918.  

Of particular interest in the show, and only possible in a major retrospective of such number and quality of works, the viewer can begin to see the working methods of the artist as evidenced in both spontaneous preparatory works and later, larger versions of a same or similar scenes. 

There are at least three pairs of such works included in the Brown County show.

Afternoon at the Ford, 1898, T. C. Steele

On the Whitewater Sands, 1897, and Afternoon at the Ford, 1898, present a nearly identical view of the Whitewater River near Brookville, Indiana. It even seems nearly the same time of year that is painted as the distant hills in both pictures possess nearly the same colors. The earlier piece is the smaller and the sketchier of the two. It has an overall diffuse effect and lacks any particular highlight or splash of light and dark. The larger piece possesses more drama, more color, more reflection on the water and more focus for the eye.  

The Grist Mill and The Old Mill, both 1901, each present the same building on a sunny day, but this time from slightly different angles. The smaller piece again appears the more spontaneous sketch of the scene, with the larger work being more thought out, composed and possessing addition areas for the eye to focus as it moves around the larger canvas.  

And finally, the earliest pair, both named September, both created in 1892. 

September, 1892, T. C. Steele
the smaller work

Again the compositions and dimensions of the scene are almost identically proportioned between the works. Even the cloud formations have many shared features perhaps indicative of a single view of the scene that was later perhaps enlarged, or edited or elaborated upon. 

Whether a true blue rendition of a real scene, or one infused with the essence of some greater thing, the larger work appears born of destiny and would be exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair the next year. 

There is something about this painting that is magical. Reproductions do not do it justice. A combination of bravura handling of the paint, a novelty of soft color combinations amazingly balanced and a pleasing decorative design. Steele achieves a dreamy peaceful harmony born of a direct sketch from nature.

Upon viewing this wonderful show, one sees the unbridled energy of a master at work. The record of his swift brush, from sketch to masterpiece.

A wily, seasoned virtuoso, for whom no holds were barred in his search for the spirit of things.

September, 1892, T. C. Steele
was exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893

Mark Diekhoff, August 2026

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.

101st Hoosier Salon at the Indiana State Museum

101st Hoosier Art Salon, Indiana State Museum

101st Annual Hoosier Art Salon – Tradition and Variety.

The start of the second century of the annual Hoosier Salon exhibit has closed at the end of last month at the Indiana State Museum. Displayed in a large gallery of four long walls separated by central display section to break up the space and add hanging for the numerous works included in the show. As in prior shows, the prize winning categories for works in all media included Landscape, Portrait, Still Life, Figurative, Animal and Abstract. There was also a 3-Dimensional category for sculpture and related works. 

Jurors Anne Blair Brown and Hector Acuna curated the exhibit that included 145 works by 129 artists.

The works were arranged randomly around the gallery as opposed to gathered in groups of like subject or style. It produced the atomizing overall effect that is expected in large group shows with many artworks that can be a bit overwhelming due to the multitude of genres, techniques and colors. The two-dimensional works were hung in a modified salon-style, just two deep, that provided for uncluttered viewing when observing an artwork at close distance.

The exhibit was well attended on its last Saturday with many visitors, in small groups or alone with the art, making their way among the works, and spending time before their favorites.

Landscapes – including Best of Show.

Carol Strock-Wasson's Blue Gray Winter Light was awarded Best of Show. The large oil landscape of a snowy, winter scene delivers its title in cool to cold tones. The desolate expanse of its gray winter sky envelopes a large snow covered field that dominates the picture with a blueish hue that chills to the bone. Further cold tones of a deep evergreen tree that frames the right foreground, and a distant skeletal treeline of brown/purple, continue the somber mood. Only the barely registering orange/brown of the  scant fall foliage remaining on a few trees, and of the dormant summer grass peaking through wheel ruts in the snow, contain a hint of fading warmth. The path leads diagonally from the picture's foreground center back into the depth of the picture, to one bright spot of whitest gray in distant snow. 

The artist has another exceptional piece in the show, also a landscape, but executed in pastel, Water in the Ditch. 

As cool is her painting, warm is her pastel. Shades of bright orange and yellow color the foliage of brush and spent wildflowers that line a reflective, brightened creek in in the slanting soft sunlight of a muted harvest sky. Only the purple-appearing shadow of a treeline in the distance of the picture cools the mellow glow.

Although this artist's work does not break new ground, indeed her winter scene is reminiscent of the solemn winter works of Indianapolis artist Dorothy Morlan, who created similar paintings a century ago, Strock-Wasson's pictures indicate a mature perfection of handling and a dexterity of mood creation through her virtuoso use of color.

The winter painting can be compared with another entry, Chilled Awakening, by Curt Stanfield, also a blue and snowy winter scene.  Other than the season and the overall color, Stanfield's work shares little  in common with the Strock-Wasson piece. Stanfield achieves the shock of cold temperature through the use of a luminous pure blue to paint shadowed light on the snow which dominates two-thirds of the picture. A mere three colors, white, brown and blue, build the expressionist composition of bare, needle-like trees and the corresponding zigzag of their shadows. The paintings jarring effect is quite distinct from Strock-Wasson's more subtle use of muted cool colors. 

Another artist with two entries in the exhibit was David M. Seward, whose Aqua House won a 3rd Place in the Landscape/Cityscape category.  Experiencing the large oil painting in person, has an interesting effect. A combination of the unique close perspective of the house on the left side of the painting which angles the eye to the pictures center with its color-field wedges of sunny roof, and sun and shaded siding. Centering the eye to the same sweet spot is the arc of the bending grass, a bit blurry as if from a strong breeze in the pictures foreground. The center of interest is the aqua porch and a single pink and puny flowering plant, perhaps peony or rosebush, and the red interior front room seen in an open window between blue shutters. A spring tree, brightly lit by noonday sun, and more sketchily in the distance are a fence, a neighboring building, a rolling hillside and bit of blue sky that complete the scene.

Bridge to Heaven, David M. Seward, 101st Hoosier Salon

Seward's other entry, also an oil painting, Bridge to Heaven,  has a similar off-kilter feel.  Again the artist paints a scene whose novel composition creates a visceral sensation. The slight vortex of Aqua House is replaced in this painting by a subliminal spiral. The picture is of a bridge over a stream. The viewer stands in the painter's shoes in cool shade aside a massive concrete pier supporting one end of a steel truss bridge on the picture's left. This spot, amid a wildly corkscrewing composition made up of the alternating stripes of the bridge's shadow on the shoreline, and the steel work of the bridge itself. The spiral concludes across the river where the bridge and its shadow, reflected on the water, meet in a pincer point of blackness offset by the brightest glow of green leaves that curtain the right side of the view.

In both paintings, the artist's builds interesting pictures with idiosyncratic points of view that create drama and eye movement by observing severely receding lines of perspective.    

Perhaps the show's most surprising landscape, upon close inspection, is Adagio by Stephen B. Moss. The musical meaning of the title is 'slow moving', which may refer to the movement of time across the seasons over the course of a year, or the movement of the sun from dawn to dusk. The picture's subject is a field of brambles in familiar fall colors under a thinly cloud-veiled sky. But 'slow' may also refer to the painstaking  manner of the acrylic painting's creation. Like a gem cutter, Moss has a amassed his scene through the application of thousands of precision-edged facets of layered colors. Not strokes of paint, but micro-shards of irregular geometries;  rectangles, triangles and dashed lines. The carefully painted shapes operate like brushstrokes, with their haphazard arrangement of pixels resulting in an amazingly organic simulacrum of the nature of nature itself.

Rockport Shoppers, Jerry Smith, 101st Hoosier Salon

Other more tradition landscapes in the show include Justin Vining's Carb Day 2025, which was a 2nd Place winner in the category, Jerry Smith's two oils, Autumn Passage and Rockport Shoppers, and Summer Day, a pastel by Mary Ann Davis. The Vining painting and Smith's small town street scene each show the decisive and rapid application of colorful brushstrokes by their painters. Vining paints with a varied vocabulary of strokes, each to a distinct purpose such as linear marks for architecture and pointillist crowds. Smith's vibrant, sunny street is composed mostly of a chaotic mix of thick, brave dabs of paint applied every which way, to pleasing effect.

Calle 12 barrio San Carlos, Mary E, Mindiola, 101st Hoosier Salon

A vibrant and colorful street scene of primary and complimentary colors is the subject of Mary E. Mindiola's Calle 12 barrio San Carlos. The large collage presents a red car in the foreground offset by rolling and verdant fields, a purple street contrasting with nearby sunny walls, and the blue shadows of distance and sky as opposed to the orange roofs of houses.  

An offbeat landscape is seen in the John Hrehov oil, Neighbor Flowers. Back-lit limelight hydrangeas and a colorful bed of mixed zinnias dominate the foreground of the painting that retreats in a blurry distance, perhaps true to a photographic source. Between the retreating perspective of  two gray buildings, a bit of fuzzy tree and sky, and an out of focus figure watering with a garden hose making a bright spray of white and blue at the center of the picture. 

Music City Liquors, Brian Burt, 101st Hoosier Salon

Two works that stretch the landscape category are Brian Burt's Music City Liquors and Samuel Leopold's Cross-Connect. Burt's meticulous oil of a road sign melds the influences of pop, photo-realism, trompe l'oeil and landscape. Leopold's landscape, if it is that, is a symmetric view from above a city intersection of high-rise buildings converging. From the bird's eye vantage, the picture looks to be a hard-edge abstraction at first glance.  But a second look, and upon further review, Leopold's painting may just be a homage to the 2D universe of early video games.

Ctoss-Connect, Samuel Leopold, 101st Hoosier Salon

Portraits and Figures.

The glassy shine seen across the gallery room makes one think that Sue P. Gillock's Reflections of a Celebration is perhaps a large, colorful watercolor under glass. Actually, it is a portrait of a woman in an oil painting dominated by the natural light reflection of numerous windows around the curving surfaces of two wine glasses, toasted and tapping, from the close perspective of an unseen celebrant. Reds, Merlot and flesh tones otherwise prevail in the canvas which oozes of a warm, coziness.

Reflections of a Celebration, Sue P. Gillock, 101st Hoosier Salon

Russell Recchion's Tie-Dye Muse is a traditional seated portrait, with its female subject facing the painter, but looking away toward the natural light of a window. The light reminds one of Vermeer, as does the sitter's antique wood carved chair. But she is not distant, as the Dutch master portrayed, but rather intimate and close to the painter. Her face reveals no clear emotion, but her slightly upraised eyes present a slight yearning to her otherwise tranquil state. Beautifully and expertly painted and composed, with a small circular religious painting crowning the top background above the woman's head.

Tie-Dye Muse, Russell Recchion, 101st Hoosier Salon

She wears a tie-dye T-shirt, in well worn rainbow colors. The liveliest light is glinted from the woman's earring, a medallion necklace, and her eyes.

Inspired by Adventure by Debra Huse presents a sunny nautical theme, not unlike last year's Best of Show watercolor and gouache, Pop's Straw Hat, by Diane Wunderlich. In a typical contemporary impressionist manner, Huse has painted a photograph in oil of two children captaining a speedboat with a flag in the background. 

Me, Myself and I - I, Sepideh Motevasel, 101st Hoosier Salon

The triple abstract mixed media collage portrait, Me, Myself and I – I, by Sepideh Motevasel, presents  a three-faced contemplative figure amid a busy and colorful abstract design of various harshly contrasting textures. Head-like and animal-like forms swirl about the main subject gowned in green. The creatures could be menacing, but are rendered as dreamy apparitions, more pretty that they are scary.   

Winning 2nd Place Figure, was Jeanette Hammerstein and her oil, Are you there God, it's me. The meaning of the title is elusive in the study of a woman pouring water into a teacup. The woman wears a red puffy coat in the picture set in somber shades of dark aqua and green. It may just be an exercise in contrasting color. Ghostly figures sit at a table in the background. A more visible man, just over her shoulder, gives an impression of a white bearded wisdom. But it's only his non-shaded face beneath the bill of his trucker cap. The woman's side glance adds to the unknowing.  But there is nothing there to be nervous about that can be seen in the picture, other than sliced lemons that seem harmless enough.

John Carter's 3rd Place Figure, Santa Fe Shawl, is pure impressionism with a style influenced by Renoir and a mirrored double portrait that reminds of Manet. It takes a busy brushwork of glittering strokes to subdue the fire of Santa Fe color and pattern, and only the woman's finely painted profile and a small dish of oranges in the background can survive the opulent shimmer.

Snow Queen, India Cruse-Griffin, 101st Hoosier Salon

A colorful shawl that holds its own is seen in Snow Queen, a large full-length seated portrait by India Cruse-Griffin.  The cubist mixed media work of an ambitious scale won an award for the artist as a First-Time Exhibitor. The eyes of the viewer alternate among the face, robe and hands of the queen amid a surreal foreground of draping blankets and background of ice and bare trees.

Held, Stephanie Spay, 101st Hoosier Salon

Stephanie Spay's Held, is another portrait of a sitter with a cup of tea. However, in this picture the beverage cup, the entire scene, is from a perspective of directly above. The circular tea is at the epicenter of the oil painting, and is surrounded by the sipping subject, who, due to the strange viewpoint, is reduced to an abstraction of muted and harmonious colors of clothing, hair, flesh and carpet, all dappled variously in light from a window out of frame.

1st Place Figure was Kyle Ragsdale's The Kids Are Alright. The multi-figurative composition plays out in two rooms of a house party. The front room is a spectacle of black light neon '80s, in flaming  pink and purple. A couple of musicians play violin and guitar for a dog who sits like an Egyptian statue and a young man standing like a caryatid, melding into the wall.  Beyond the lava light of the front room, the real action takes place in the harsh yellow light of a back room, where couples form and dance and chat, oblivious to the druggy scene out front. 

The Kids Are Alright, Kyle Ragsdale, 101st Hoosier Salon

Contemporary Abstract Expressionism.   

Many of  the abstract works, including the big winner, are in the style of contemporary abstract expressionism that prefers decorative colors and carefully balanced compositions. Whereas the originators of the genre, created often unbalanced, and at times unhinged works, arguable ugly and anti-decorative to the eyes of their times, (think of Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning), the modern ab ex artists in this show have settled on large, colorful and pleasingly predictable living room pieces that would seem well suited for display amid Ikea sofas and chairs.

Winning 3rd Place Abstraction was an oil painting, Willy-Nilly, by April Willy. The work presents an abstracted clump of flowers whose globular, candy-colored petals rise from a bit a green leaves, again globular, and a few gracefully arcing brown stems. Floating flowers protrude in a raised relief of cut circles of painted canvas adhered to the face of the picture. Other fuzzier more distant blooms fade into a background, muted and dissolving but still colorful.   

Trying to Get All My Ducks in a Row, Brenda Stichter, 101st Hoosier Salon

The 1st Place winner, Trying to Get All My Ducks in a Row by Brenda Stichter, is an acrylic that pays homage to Hans Hoffman's squares by marching bright pink 'ducks' (here an artist used globules again) from top left, across the center and to the right right bottom of the picture. The effect is something not altogether pleasing or unpleasing, but something in between.

2nd Place in the category went to the fiber art piece Someplace Else I'd Rather Be, by Carrie L. Wright. Whether composed of dyed or found fabric, or a combination of both, the result is an exuberant overload of bright colors in a complex, almost paisley, design. It may vaguely represent a landscape viewed through an exploding or enlightened vision, as there seems a sky-like area at top, with a more blue and white openness as opposed to cramped cacophony of clashing color below.

Altogether different, and perhaps not an abstract at all, but rather a strange still life, is Cindy Wingo's Life's Balance VIII.  It would be no surprise to see this large acrylic picture in a flip house staging above a millennial-gray couch, but it's more than a mere bit of monochrome décor. The artist won a prize with a picture from the same series in last year's 100th Hoosier Salon. And she was exploring a similar color vein in her show Black and White at the Greater Lafayette Museum of Art of a couple years back. Hers is a careful study of hue and tone, surface, subject and composition, even if the painting is just the captured likeness of a pocketful of stones.

A piece in the style of the late abstract movement, Op Art or neo geo, is John DeCosta's acrylic TRI-Plex. Three pyramidal squares seemed to pulsate in a glowing, fluorescent, rectangular footprint amid a bed of magenta. The somewhat simple and minimal hard-edge design is softened by the wax and wane of the optical effects the artist has achieved through his painting of color diffused.     

  

A Final Three.

A First-Time Exhibitor award was given to Arkady Roytman for the small oil portrait, Katie. The unpretentious work shows a young red-headed woman in a colorscape room to match of rose, salmon, and warm flesh-tone. The deft brushwork contributes to the casual and spontaneous feel of the picture which captures the alluring likeness of a meditative calm and trust.

View Out Back - Hammond, IN, Tony Bianco, 101st Hoosier Salon

A Juror's Special Award was given to Tony Bianco and his acrylic painting, View Out Back – Hammond, IN. Bianco's painting serves as a metaphor of why art will always exist. Why drawings and paintings will always be made. The artist's eyes notice things that demand acknowledgment and preservation. A preservation beyond personal memory or words, but something more concrete, tangible, and existential, a thing to be shared. Bianco's eyes saw a washroom symphony in yellow and white. An unlikely urban oasis. He saw patina instead of grime. A momentary vision, an epiphany, acknowledge by his eyes, preserved by his paint.    

And finally, near the door, aside the People's Choice fan favorite voting box, is a watercolor by Alyssa Wolber, Onward.  It is the uncomplicated image of a child, hanging on to a challenge ladder monkey bars. The picture appears as a photograph or a magazine illustration as much as a fine art piece, as it is bereft of background detail or any painterly contrivance. But it is well and believably rendered. 

Onward, Alyssa Wolber, 101st Hoosier Salon

The child becomes an 'everykid,' as his face is obscured almost entirely by his arm hanging on the bar above.

Hang on kid, you can do it. And if you are not a People's Choice, you were almost there.

Mark Diekhoff, November 2025 

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