Friday, July 30, 2010
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| 12/1/2008 6:08:00 PM |
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Winfield artist garners national attention for her work
Carolyn Harmon
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| Janet Ripper Chambers recently won Honorable Mention in The National Annual Miniature Exhibition at The Renaissance Art Gallery, in Huntington. She is holding up another painting, “Pumpkinseeds.” This painting was not in the show. |
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WINFIELD - The National Annual Miniature Exhibition opened in November at The Renaissance Art Gallery, a non-profit artist cooperative, in Huntington.
According to Susan Tschantz, board member, artist and teacher of the co-op, a miniature is more than a small painting. More than size, the term refers to technique, originating with the illuminations on ancient manuscripts, Tschantz said. It is producing a perfect balance of color and detail in a series of thinly applied colors within a boundary.
One artist, who received Honorable Mention in the National Annual Miniature Exhibition, is Janet Ripper Chambers, of Winfield.
Chambers is a graduate of Marshall University with a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts). Her discipline is painting, and she said that the 2" x 3"miniature that won honorable mention was the smallest she ever painted.
"It just happened," Chambers said. "I was working on another larger piece and had a little piece of illustration board left over and I thought it would be so neat to put a little landscape on there."
Chambers works with gouache, water color, oil sticks, and pen and ink, at her in-home gallery. She regularly enters shows and often comes away a winner. A few weeks ago she took away two prizes, one a first-place in watercolor, at the Point Pleasant Battle Days Art Show. The first prize she ever won came when she was 10 or 12 in the form of a ribbon and to top off the day, a lady came along and purchased the little painting of a daffodil.
While Chambers relishes her talent, she is not the first in her family to do so. Her parents, siblings, and grandparents on her father's side are or were artists. Her father, Chuck Ripper, who Chambers describes as very brave, is a famous artist and illustrator for catalogues such as L.L. Bean. Chambers recalls coming home from school when she and her sister would find their father working in his studio.
"We would go in there and see what he was working on and he'd say, 'there's the desk - you all sit down and draw and do whatever you want to,' and I wanted to," Chambers said.
Now, Chambers' children are coming up as artists too. Her daughter, Anna, her son, Charles, and her husband, Doug, are in the process of creating together. Doug, who Janet describes as wonderful, is a biologist, who sometimes provides live illustrations for Janet and often helps her with the painting of a fish, by showing her the correct way that a specific fin might look. The family spends a lot of time in nature, and whether it is Dolly Sods or Maine, they always find real subjects waiting on them.
"Something will catch my eye, like a landscape, and eventually I'll see it on the paper and I'll want to create it," Chambers said.
Chambers paints everyday and even illustrates books when the opportunity comes along. One book, "TOYSS" (Teaching Our Youngsters Speech Sounds,) was written by her friend Jo Eichberger who is a speech therapist in Putnam County. Another she worked on over the summer is not published yet, but is about dolphins. She also provides paintings to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources award-winning "DNR Wildlife Calendar," along with her father and sister.
While illustrating can be interesting, she prefers to paint paintings.
"The work is very therapeutic," Chambers said. "That sounds kind of corny - it's just something that my father did and I just started it when I was young and it's wonderful I just have that desire.
For anyone interested in seeing Janet Ripper Chambers' art, call her at 304-586-3209.
Some samples of her work can be found at www.southsidegallery.com.
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