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COMMUNITY
SUNDAY, MAY 26, 1996
W1B
Local artist paints OLG leaders9 portraits
STORY AND PHOTOS BY TRACI BONNEY
Thanks to a new arrival at Our Lady of the Gulf, the church?s new community center has a pictorial history of OLG?s leaders.
Jacki Yarrington, who moved to Bay St. Louis last June, has completed portraits of 13 of the church?s 15 pastors. The church found one other pastor?s portrait, which fits in well with the ones Yarrington has executed.
The only one missing is that of the church?s founder, Father Louis Stanislaus Buteaux. Yarrington said the church has been unable to find any photos of him for her to use.
?We?ve looked in the church?s photos; the church is even making inquiries in France, where he came from. So far, we can?t find one single picture of the man,? she commented.
Yarrington, who paints portraits exclusively from photographs, said, ?I don?t like to ask people to sit for portraits. It?s so time-consuming for the person, and very tiring. If you take a break and let the person get up and move around, it?s hard to recapture the same pose. Besides, painting a portrait can take several days, even weeks.?
The portrait project started when Yarrington rendered pen-and-ink drawings of OLG and its community center, and showed them to Father Peter Mockler. After seeing the drawings, which she gave to him, he agreed to help Yarrington find the photos to paint the pastors? portraits.
?I started with Father Mockler,? she said. ?I took about 10 photos of him, and asked him to pick his favorite. But he?s so modest that he insisted I choose, so I picked one of him with the Sound in the background. I liked that shot of him, with the water behind him; it seemed appropriate because of the church?s setting.
?The only thing is, when I painted him I painted his hair swept back off his forehead, like it was in the picture. When he saw it, he told me he didn?t wear his hair that way; he wore it combed down. The wind had blown it back. So, I had to repaint his hair.
?That was okay, though, because I work only in acrylics, which makes it easy to correct things. I think oil is beautiful, but I like acrylics better. I don?t like the smell of oil paints, and besides, you can paint over your mistakes more easily with acrylics.?
She said that several of the older pictures she used were black and white, which presented a bit of a challenge.
?I had to guess on the hair and eye colors on some of the priests,? she explained.
?I?m afraid that when I die and get to heaven, one of them is going to co me up to me and say something like, You gave me blue eyes, and they?re green!?? she added with a laugh.
?Some of the portraits went very fast, and some I?d just work and work. Sometimes I?d just blot the whole face out and start over.
?It gave mej an opportunity to do a lot of different character faces. This onfc, for instance,? she said, pointing to Msgr. Moloney?s portrait, ?kept coming out looking Chinese, especially the eyes. He?s Irish, but his face kepit looking Asian, no matter what; I did.?
Yarrington, j who received art training a.t the Chicago Academy of F^ne Arts, is a former commercial graphics artist. After a brief and unsuccessful attempt at dealing in reell estate, she decided to reldre from the workforce entirely.
?I lived in Metairie for more than 25 years,? she said. ?My husband and I had talked
about moving to this area, because we both love it so much, but he died before we could move.
?Some of my family talked me into moving to Arizona in 1994. I moved 32 boxes and a dog some 1,600 miles to Aho, which is 120 miles south of
Phoenix out in the middle of nowhere.
?I was only there a few months, but I was afraid for myself and my dog, what with the snakes, coyotes and javelinas (large wild pigs) all over the place. I?m not the
pioneer type. So I left June 2 of last year and moved here.?
The portraits she has painted hang in the two entryways to the OLG community center. They are available for viewing whenever the center is open to the public.
Local artist Jacki Yarrington poses with some of the portraits she has painted.