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Arts
PHOTOS BY DAVID PURDY/THE SUN HERALD
Warner likes to paint angels that she says are popular among young couples with children.
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The walls in Jean Warner?s home are covered with her paintings, along with other artists? work that she enjoys. Warner suffers from macular degeneration, which affects her vision severely enough that she can't drive.
By PAM FIRMIN
THE SUN HERALD
BAY ST. LOUIS ? Ludwig van Beethoven has little on Jean Warner when it comes to persistent pursuit of their art. While he composed the celebrated ?Ninth Symphony? despite deafness, Warner continues to paint despite deteriorating eyesight caused by macular degeneration.
?It?s just the spirit of the thing,?
Warner said. ?If you love what you?re doing, you?ll keep doing it.
At this point in my life, it?s great I can do what I?m doing with my vision.?
The 81-year-old Warner combines a passion to create with an admiration for the work of other artists.
Throughout her Bay St. Louis home, wall-to-wall art is ceiling high, a mixture of her own expressionistic paintings in oil, acrylic and pastel and an eclectic collection by others.
Her soft pastel, titled ?Sleepy Dawn,? was shown this summer in the Cross Currents juried exhibit at Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs. Another, ?Rendezvous,? was displayed during December in the Pass Christian Art Association?s show at the city library.
Also, ?I do the New Orleans Pirates Alley and French Quarter scenes,? she said.
She arrived in Bay St. Louis 20 years ago via New Orleans, Chicago, California and points abroad, the result of marriage to a traveling engineer.
?I remember when I came over here,? she said, ?1 thought I was the only artist doing something ? painting out of my kitchen.?
She convinced a new book store, at what?s now Serenity Gallery, to carry her art by suggesting that ?art goes well with books.? The owner groaned, but the art sold. Then, other artists brought in their works.
?I like to encourage the young people in the community to keep doing their things. As long as you can, just go, go, go. There are so many talented young people out there ? just enormous talent; not just trendy. I try to make all the shows, because I want to see what they?re doing.?
Her strongest early influence in art was during studies with Chiura Obata, the landscape painter who?s been called California?s master artist. That was during the Depression years when Warner was a student at the University of California.
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Warner paints by using her periph high-powered magnifying glasses.
Unfortunately, Warner of the Japanese Americ World War II.
When her husband?s. ing the 1950s, Warner i sketched natives in Tui Spain. There, the pregi cise three days a week Prado museum, studyii ters.
Back in the United St clay Sheaks in Newpor juried work in Arlingto California and, by the 1 in New Orleans,? to tal business school in her ?I had been doing oul she recalled. ?There?s; that opens up your mir For Warner, that was Universoty of New Orl Orleans newspaperma: ?I never expected to 1 said. ?But I have been, tions, a serious vein th once in a while, I get p Cats dominate her ?fi twin cats and one titlec date.? Cat art that orig: Warner said, also is av Dogs also are include as is a series of ?Mam: ures. Her 2-foot-wide 1:
?As long as you can, just go, go, go.?
Jean Warner, artist