William Lawson Exhibit at Carpenter Realtors in Irvington

Lower Queen Anne (Seattle) by William Lawson, 2014

Carpenter Realtors, and its Branch Manager Rich Costello, present an exhibit of paintings by artist William Lawson through the end of February at their office gallery location at 5636 East Washington Street (next door to Jockamo Upper Crust Pizza). 

Lawson, an Irvington resident since 2018, shows eleven paintings created over the past thirty years including some loaned from local private collections and some that are available for purchase. 

The works, mostly landscapes, showcase Lawson's eye for spotting interesting compositions in color, form and light in his local environment. His views often fuse the urban, man-made and domestic with the natural elements of water, trees or sky.  The geometrical lines of houses, streets and telephone poles are balanced by the chaotic forms of nature, like trees and gardens, puddles reflecting sky and cobblestones faded pink from decades of sun.

His Sunny Alley – Woodruff Place, 2023, is an inconspicuous balance of primary hues with its brick alley, and two garages, one yellow, one blue.

The painting Lower Queen Anne, 2014, is from Lawson's time spent in Washington last decade, and captures a sunny day in hilly Seattle.  A VW bus parked slanting on a street before the steep stairs ascending the front of a quaint house, with colorful clothes drying on a line, and a few stalks of sweet corn growing in the front yard.

Crossing, 2003, is a study in harsh linearity – numerous poles and wires, signs and signal arms –  windows, roof lines and fences. It even contains the brick ziggurat of a factory facade at the center of the picture. The composition is mostly a two-fold study of the wild blue yonder overhead, and the wild cramped hubbub below. 

Lawson's Old Northside Alley, c. 2023, is a small knife painting in red and green, of a sunny urban scene. It is a work that appeared in the 100th Annual Hoosier Salon in 2024. 

Also on display at the location are works from Rich Costello's collection of works by Frederick Polley that include graphite and pen and ink drawings, etchings, paintings and even a World War 2 poster by the Irvington Group artist. 

Costello has also added recent works of more contemporary Indianapolis artists from his personal collection to his office gallery display, such as two paintings by the late Greg Brown who ran Utrillo Gallery and Frame on East 10th Street for many years and an interesting maquette study for a site-specific, environmental work by Herron School of Art Dean and sculptor, Greg Hull. 

The William Lawson exhibit continues through the end of the month.

Mark Diekhoff, February 2026

Portions of this article appeared in slightly different form in The Weekly View community newspaper on February 13, 2026

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

Yellow House and Garden by William Lawson

A Yellow House to Catch the Eye.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Vollrath Family, 218 S. Audubon   c. 1920

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

A Closed Down World and Open Garden.

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

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

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

The Yellow House - 218 S. Audubon by William Lawson

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

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

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

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

The Yellow House Side Garden by William Lawson

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

A Front Porch View and Wider World.

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

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

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

Old Storefront on Audubon by William Lawson

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

View From Desolation Peak by William Lawson

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

Bridge Over White River by William Lawson

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

Rooftops in Winter - Irvington by William Lawson

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

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

Irvington Railroad in Autumn by William Lawson

Cezanne and the Quiet Lives of Apples and Pears.

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

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

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

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

Cezanne's Studio by William Lawson

That Never Ending Spark of Inspiration.

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

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

Amalphi Coast by Ken Collier-Magar

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

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

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

View From Highland Park by William Lawson

Mark Diekhoff, January 2026 

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

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

M.D. 1/2/26 

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

Art Collection of Irvington Historical Society

Self Portrait by William F. Kaeser

Exhibit of Artworks from the Irvington Historical Society Collection

Currently at the Bona Thompson Center, is the exhibit An Artistic Legacy: Selections from the Irvington Historical Society Collection.  The show presents a selection of artworks from its permanent collection or on loan. 

The show coincides with the concurrent exhibit The Lost Photographs of Osbert Sumner, which continues at the same location.

Works include historic examples by members of the Irvington Group which was active from 1928 through 1937, and noteworthy pieces by more recent and contemporary artists, most with strong ties to Irvington.

Installation view detail from An Artistic Legacy show,
including Dorothy Morlan's Grey Landscape, far left

A wonderful Dorothy Morlan painting, of what may be a bend of the Ohio River, shows a bluff above a couple of cottage roofs, covered in snow, looking down over a vast river valley. The picture, Grey Landscape in this hanging, is called In the Valley (Harmony in Gray), 1933, in the book Skirting the Issue by Newton and Weiss. It is indeed musical in its interplay of varying shades of blue and gray, from very light in the skies and on the water, to more medium gray in the distant river banks, and finally a turquoise in the foreground that hosts a few thin trees that cling to a few leaves on the uppermost tips of their branches. The artist was painting near the Ohio in this period, as her Through the Trees Near Hanover appeared in the 36th Annual Indiana Artists exhibit at the Richmond (IN) Art Museum in 1934.

There are two portraits of Irvington Group painter William Kaeser. One is his own Self Portrait, c. 1960, showing him at middle age, graying hair, smoking a pipe wearing a gray cardigan sweater. The canvas is brightened and its mood enlivened by the bright orange shirt he wears, and the way it plays off the small painting's teal background. Most known for his early social realistic landscapes and circus motifs, the portrait displays his sure and fluid handling of paint, where his transitions from light to shade appear skillfully executed by his touch.

Portrait of William Kaeser by Cecil Head

The second Portrait of William Kaeser, c. 1940. is by Cecil Head. Although Head did not exhibit in the Irvington Group shows, the Whiteland artist had a long association with Kaeser. They shared studio space, along with Indianapolis artist Floyd Hopper, in downtown Indianapolis on Market Street in their early days in the 1930s, and continued to exhibit together in their final years some forty years later, in a group they called The Five. 

Head's portrait shows Kaeser nearly life-size, as a young artist smoking a pipe. The play of light and shadow seems the primary study of the painting, with Kaeser's white shirt collar, the side of his neck and face and the glint off the stem of the pipe catching the brightest attention of the artist's brush. Kaeser's face, turned away, is lost in the shadow of the dark surrounding background. The portrait is similar to a self portrait by Head, and a portrait of he did of Hopper, from the same period, both exhibited decades later at the Southside Art League.

Sycamores on West Farm by Frederick Polley

Another Irvington Group artist, Frederick Polley, is well represented in the show, with three works of three varying media; painting, etching and drawing. The artist revealed his own art origins in a 1920s newspaper article that was profusely illustrated with many of his etchings. Working as a telegraph operator in a small Illinois town, he observed an artist, new to town, sketching various buildings for a feature in the newspaper. He was inspired to try his hand at sketching and found that he had talent for drawing buildings. It was a discovery and a passion that would lead to his own career in future years, when he provided etchings and drawings to be published in the Indianapolis Sunday Star across from the editorial page, for years.

In this exhibit, his colorful oil painting, Sycamores on West Farm, is first to capture one's attention with its color. The autumn scene is of a rolling slope of foreground, so often seen with him, and in this picture, a retreating row of sycamores. The gleaming white bark is bright in sunshine, amid an otherwise warm study of the fading colors as summer turns to winter. Tan and beige ground, some final yellow leaves, brown shadows and dark orange treelines in the hazy gray distance.

Polley's etching, Getting Out in the Country, c. 1927, was one his works that appeared in the Sunday Star.  There is a poetry to his composition of a towering, almost foreboding, tree on one side, mirrored by its diminutive twin on the other, in the deep, receding perspective. Between the two, the tiny hamlet of a farm –  house, barn, shade tree and split rail fence –  that huddles beneath the open expanse of open sky.  The etching portrays the same rolling topography that is familiar in many Polleys, with the massive foreground tree atop a grassy rise that plunges the eye toward the more distant and detailed narrative of the homestead at the center the piece. 

 

The Ice House, Irvington by William Lawson

A current view of Irvington, by a current resident artist, is seen in the oil painting The Ice House, Irvington, 2019, by William Lawson.  Born in Indianapolis, he studied at Herron, and currently maintains a studio on an upper floor of the historic drug store building at the intersection of Bonna and Audubon. Lawson has been painting in Irvington since his return to Indiana in 2018 after living and painting in Seattle, Washington for a number of years.

Lawson paints his Ice House, not from Ritter Avenue facing the street, but from the other side, along the railroad tracks behind the building. He often finds points of interest off the beaten track as his many paintings of the city's alleyways attest.  Views aside railroad tracks are also recur in works by this artist over the years. The light of early spring is captured as it shines on the simple, harmonious color of the scene.  The red block tower contrasts with the emerging grass. The precise stiffness of the telephone poles and roof-lines is softened by the thin billow of clouds, the fuzzy treeline in the distance and the dusty gravel along the tracks.  An old tire and other litter are not unsightly, but noteworthy to his brush. The railroad tracks do not escape, but run through. They seem to summon somewhere. Either direction, come or go, something else to see.

North Arlington Avenue at Pleasant Run by Rachel May Blount Conner

Perhaps the oldest painting of the neighborhood in the collection is Rachel May Blount Conner's North Arlington Avenue Bridge at Pleasant Run, 1885. The rustic scene, painted in a self-taught folk art style, may first appear alien to any current views at that location.  But walks along the creek in the area of Pleasant Run Golf Course do show the similar details of exposed tree roots along the washed away creek-side and eroded walls on steep inclines beside the water. The open green surrounded by trees like in her painting still exist in the southern edge of the golf course today.  The main interest in the painting is its capture of the rudimentary bridge and its stone block abutments at either end that traversed the creek at that time.

The Bona Thompson Center by Ginny Taylor Rosner

The Bona Thompson Center, 2007, a gum bichromate photograph on Lanaquarelle paper by Ginny Taylor Rosner was part of a series of works created of Irvington landmarks for the former Legends Restaurant. The work, abstracted by its extreme close up presentation, shows vines growing up the side of the building and is a study in cream yellow and green.  

Robert Selby's 1929, The Forsyth's Backyard is wildly painted with expressive slashing strokes. The picture captures the spring season with pink blossoming trees and bright new leaves. Selby exhibited with the Irvington Group, and was son-in-law to William Forsyth and brother-in-law to Constance Forsyth, both of whom are also represented in this show. The Backyard is of the Forsyth home at the corner of Washington Street and Emerson Avenue, which is the location of a gas station today.

The exhibit also contains work by three other Irvington Group members, all watercolor landscapes. Clifton Wheeler's Hillside with Cabin, Hilah Drake Wheeler's Devil's Gultch – Estes Park,  and Charles George Yeager's Untitled view of a village beside a lake surrounded by rocky hills.

Benton House by Kathleen Biale

The exhibited collection also includes works by Harry Davis, John Wesley Hardrick, Florence Bartley Smithburn, Patte Owings, James Lynch, E. Roger Frey, Kathleen Biale, Phyllis Zimmerman, and Carl Zimmerman. and continues through the end of the year.  

Mark Diekhoff, November 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.