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HURSDAY, DEC. 11, 1986
HlKSl NUlJiUJ)
Feanne Warner juts memories lown on canvas
>y NAN PATTON EHRBR1GHT
IANCOCK COUNTY BUREAU
i HAY ST. LOUIS ? Some people upplcment their memories, both the .ighlights and the humdrum, with ameras ? photographing a face lere, a place there, an image that one lopes will recapture a mood, a scent,
sound.
Jeanne Kruse Wamer preserves icrs on canvas.
A collection of what Wamer refers o as her "memory paintings? is on lisplay at the Bay St. Louis branch of he Hancock County library through December. The exhibit includes >aintings from 1950 through 1986. ^ocal residents will especially enjoy ler most recent work, which includes jaintings of the beaches, Buccaneer state Park, Bayou Cadet, New Or-eans? French Quarter and Warner?s iay St. Louis neighborhood in Cedar Point.
Wamer, a native Californian, grew jp in Oakland ? ?but I had the good :aste to marry a Southerner,? she added hastily, and has lived in this area since the late 1960s, first in New Orleans, and in Bay St. Louis since 1980.
Her interest in painting developed early, and she studied art at the University of California in Berkeley, then switched to a business school in San Francisco, apparently under some pressure from her father.
"I always had this creative feeling. I was a Depression child. [My artistic interests] worried my father. He worried that the Bohemian in me might come out!" she said.
Warner?s marriage to a civil engineer took her to Turkey, Spain and all over the United States. Her paints and sketchbooks went along, and were used to record her impressions.
Her business training stood her in good stead when she and her husband took over her husband?s family business, Gamer Secretarial School in New Orleans, and operated it from 1969 to 1979.
"I really couldn?t get back fulltime into painting then. I maybe did five or six a year. But it was great, because I had a captive audience. I would take
___. ,77ON EHrtBRlGHf^ANCOCK COUNI
Jeanne Warner views some of her ?memory paintings? on display in Bay St. Louis through Dec
ative frustration, and my students were entertained.?
Warner's husband died in 1980, shortly after they moved to Bay St.
Louis.
"I try to paint as often as I can, but that's not every day. And then you go through dry spells. If you have a dry spell, forget it!? she said.
Although Warner studied with Chirua Obata and Barclay Sheaks ?
It was Sheaks, she said, who taught her that ?the sky is not necessarily always blue. ? she says she quit formal studies with other artists years ago.
"1 think if you get into too much structure it ruins the natural flow. I'm influenced by my own environment. 1 don?t stick with any one thing. I just do whatever comes naturally at the time. It?s like a creative urge that comes out. I can?t stifle it, whether it's good, bad or indifferent.
?I just paint for me," Wamer said.
?If I sell one, that?s lagniappe. If I'm lucky, I can sell some once in a while and I can contribute to my own ?delinquency? and buy more paints and canvas. ?
But, she added with a grin, ?Down the line somewhere, you hope some- LIBRARY EXHIBIT Jeanne Kruse Warner of Bay St. Louis is exhi one will say, ?Well, we won?t throw ler paintings through December at City-County Library, US-90. W out that Warner.? "	itudied under Chiura Obata, distinguished California landscape pa
She is working mostly in oils and Through introspective study of her environment she has produced a


Artists Local Warner
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