PRINTWinning artist notes his strokes are all in the family
Kelly Coalier
February 1, 2007 | 12:00 a.m. CST
A fiddler, pianist and guitar player walk into a bar. Actually, in Kelly Coalier's award-winning painting they're just jamming in the artists' living room. Coalier's work was just one of many competing in the Columbia Art League's current show, Visual Sounds.
"This is an excellent example of the theme of the exhibition," says Victoria Weaver from the Daum Museum in Sedalia, who guest-juried the show. "The artist then pushes the idea further using visual elements to create a lively environment - enabling the viewer to not only feel the musical vibration in the room but hear the sounds running through ones head."
Related ArticlesKelly Coalier, whose watercolor and pencil Gary, Carrie and Berry took first place in Visual Sounds, tells Vox all about his art, his music and his family.
Q: What’s your background as an artist?
A: I’ve been an artist for 25 years. I taught art for a while in St. Louis. When I moved here I started a store, Orchids and Art, selling my own artwork and picture framing. Generally my artwork is based on traveling.
Q: Your work is reminiscent of stained glass. Is that typical of your style?
A: People say that all the time. It definitely is related to things like that by the way it’s designed: kind of broken up to pieces. It’s influenced by cartooning, by comics, by cubism and by photography.
Q: How do you think music and the visual arts are connected?
A: I think music, especially more like classical music and jazz and things like that lend themselves to visual interpretations really easily. I’ve entered shows like that several times in the past—years ago—that had to do with music as a topic. It’s a fairly common art show to run across. With music, as well as in art, you have lots of rhythms and patterns and repetitions of certain elements. It’s a similar way of thinking.
Q: Do you listen to music while you create art?
A: Almost always! Sometimes it’s just the news. But, I listen to all kinds of music.
Q: Your painting has three musicians jamming in the living room. What’s happening in the scene?
A: I usually take a lot of pictures in our house of my kids and family members doing stuff and do drawings and paintings of that. I’ve always wanted to draw my father-in-law, who plays the fiddle. He’s a prominent character in the painting. My wife plays piano and my brother-in-law is a guitarist. There’s a painting by Marc Chagall that’s called The Green Fiddler. The fiddle player in the picture has a little greenish tinge to it, so it kind of plays off with that. Generally, it fits into a lot of the other artwork I do, where it’s family scenes. We have a unique house—it’s almost like living in a still life or something.
Q: What kind of music are they playing?
A: My wife’s dad plays bluegrass or traditional Irish fiddle tunes, and the two kids usually just accompany him. He’s the one that knows all the songs. My wife’s brother is also a jazz musician. I’ve recently had children, and they’ve been playing a big role in the artwork.
Q: Is there anything in the scene that might go unnoticed?
A: There’s actually a fourth person in it. There’s the foot in there; that’s one of the kids listening to it. It’s probably one of the only pictures in the history of art that has a pig castrator. It’s kind of a decoration on the wall.
The Winners
First Place: Kelly Coalier of Ashland
Gary Carrie Berry, watercolor and pencil
This winning watercolor and pencil work, reminiscent of stained glass, shows three family members playing a piano, fiddle and a guitar for a living room jam session.
Second Place: Nora Othic of Columbia
Girl Band
In this pastel work, three hard-core females rock out as two male audience members appear unabashed.
Third Place: Aaron Robb
Rhythm of a Blues Legend: SHINE
Bordering on cubism, this oil painting fragments the guitarist and his barnyard surroundings in a way that expresses a smooth bass line and a fragmented, heavy beat.
Merit Award: Aimee Vance of Marshal
Bass
An abstract face doubles as the body of a bass guitar in this oil painting.
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