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Painter not discouraged by waning vision
Warner paints by using her peripheral vision and a set of high-powered magnifying glasses.
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. e	At this point in my life, it?s great I
is	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 col-
lection 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 dis-I played during December in the Pass Christian (	Art Association?s show at the city library.
i	Also, ?I do the New Orleans Pirates Alley and
j	French Quarter scenes,? she said.
She arrived in Bay St. Louis 20 years ago via
I New Orleans, Chicago, California and points abroad, the result of marriage to a traveling engineer.
?I remember when I came over here,? she said, ?I 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 D groaned, but the art sold. '[Tien, other artists s. 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.
Unfortunately, Warner noted, Obata became one of the Japanese Americans interned during World War II.
When her husband?s job took them abroad during the 1950s, Warner studied water colors and sketched natives in Turkey and then in Madrid, Spain. There, the pregnant Warner got her exercise three days a week by walking all over the Prado museum, studying the work of old masters.
Back in the United States, she studied with Barclay Sheaks in Newport News, Va., exhibited juried work in Arlington Heights, 111., painted in California and, by the late ?60s, ?ended up back in New Orleans,? to take over a small private business school in her husband?s family.
?I had been doing outdoor shows, paintings,? she recalled. ?There?s always something else that opens up your mind.?
For Warner, that was a cartooning course at the Universoty of New Orleans, taught by New Orleans newspaperman John Chase.
?I never expected to be influenced by that,? she said. ?But I have been. I now go in two directions, a serious vein that?s not trendy ... and, once in a while, I get playful.?
Cats dominate her ?fun? animal art: crazy cats, twin cats and one titled ?Tom cat waiting for a date.? Cat art that originally went for $450, Warner said, also is available in $10 prints.
Dogs also are included in her whimsical work, as is a series of ?Mama? themes with dancing figures. Her 2-foot-wide horizontal of dancing
Please see Artist, G-7
?As long as you can, just go, go, go.?'
Jean Warner, artist