OIL PAINTING

Autumn in Indiana always makes me want to break out my oil paints. I still have a tackle box full of them here in my office, but the decades have left most of the tubes rock hard. (I know because I checked the other day while I was daydreaming of painting.)

What I really want, though, is to be Dwight Steininger. 

I don't know what my brothers thought of childhood trips to Nashville, Indiana, but I was in my element in my state's own "artist colony". It was less than an hour's drive from Shelbyville, but it seemed like an entirely different world - the hills, the log cabins, the shops. 

The ice cream and the apple butter and the glass blowing were always good, but the real highlight for me was visiting Reverend Steininger's art gallery and studio. And the best of the best was if we happened to catch him painting at his easel. 

He did my kind of art - realistic landscapes. Barns, slightly dilapidated but with some good years left in them. Quaint covered bridges over silent streams. Inviting dirt roads lined with gray boulders. Heavy clouds with dark underbellies and crowns of golden sunlight. And trees. So many trees, all dressed in the perfect fall blend of yellows and oranges and reds. 

He would chat with visitors as they wandered through his shop, but his brush would continue its task of repeatedly pulling paint off the palette and smearing it exactly where it needed to be on the canvas. He loved people and he loved God and he knew how to paint a country scene that pulled you onto the other side of the frame. 

Steininger inspired me to take oil painting lessons when I was in high school. And I wasn't terrible. My parents weren't embarrassed to hang my paintings on their wall. 

Right alongside the couple of Steiningers they owned. 

Here are a sampling of mine from 30 plus years ago:

And a sample of Steininger's work: 

I guess I better start practicing if I am still hoping to be Steininger before I die!