The McLean County Arts Center kicks off its amateur exhibition March 1, aligning with downtown Bloomington's First Friday happenings. The show has been an annual tradition for nearly a century, giving avocational artists from all age groups and mediums a chance to display their work in the arts center's Brandt Gallery.
Retired Heartland Community College professor Tom Clemens of Normal is one of dozens of artists selected from hundreds of submissions to show his painting: Trout Stream. Painting has been a slow-burning passion of Clemens’ since the mid-1970s.
“We lived in Grand Forks, ND, and I took up Norwegian rosemaling,” Clemens said.
Rosemaling is a style of decorative botanical painting, often seen on domestic items like plates and furniture. Clemens wanted to learn Swedish painting in deference to his heritage, but there wasn’t a Swedish teacher in Grand Forks at the time.
“I painted about 10 years,” he said. “Then because of family, a new house and job—I just kind of put it on the back burner.”
In 2012, an opportunity presented itself to Clemens he couldn’t pass up: Swedish-style painting classes at the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, Iowa.
“It was the first time they’d offered Swedish, which was a political battle,” Clemens said.
Swedes and Norwegians are friendly now—but that’s not always been the case. And in Grand Forks, Clemens and his wife, Dianne, who’s Norwegian, were labelled a “mixed marriage.”
He took the class every year, under different instructors and working on different projects, until the start of the pandemic. He added Swedish language classes in order to add proverbs to the decorative painting style.
“I really got into it as a hobby and I would give away whatever I painted,” Clemens said. “Dianne reinforced the idea I couldn’t keep everything.”
Getting into landscapes
Trout Steam is a clear departure from Clemens' decades-long commitment to Swedish painting. He started experimenting with landscapes a few years ago, using Norwegian or Swedish scenes as references. Trout Stream is one of the first attempts to paint a picture Clemens took while traveling. He’s now working on another of a redwood forest.
Clemens is most fascinated by color, working the canvas over and over until the mix is just right.
“For me, the main thing with color is how light hits it,” he said. “Color is nuanced. What our brains see and what our eyes see are two different things.”
Before retiring from Heartland Community College, Clemens moved from the English department into an administrative role evaluating teachers. He snuck in some art training in the process by observing painting classes, then refining the technique on his own.
It took about five months to get Trout Stream to the point that he was really to call it finished.
“I compare it to what Stephen Spender said about poetry. You never finish a poem, you merely abandon it,” Clemens said. “It’s combining those colors in ways that produce the object as the eye sees it. There’s not a strict guide to that.”
Clemens entered Trout Stream for consideration in the Amateur Exhibition hoping to get feedback—mainly on how he produced the eddies and current in the stream. He's a lifelong learner, painting and playing fiddle in his home studio nearly every day. At 74, Clemens said he'll keep painting as long as his eyes and hands let him.
“It gives me a different way of looking at the world,” he said. “It gives me a sense of connection to what’s around me. To nature and to life. I always can learn something new that gives me the spark to keep on looking, living, breathing and interacting with people and nature itself—and all the little microcosms of nature I see around me.”
The 97th annual Amateur Exhibition runs March 1 – April 24 in the Brandt Gallery at the McLean County Arts Center, 601 N. East St., Bloomington. On March 1 from 5-7 p.m., the center is holding an artists’ reception celebrating solo shows by Tracey Maras and Phil Smith in the Dolan and Armstrong Galleries. Amateur Exhibition awards will be handed out Saturday, March 2, at 1 p.m. mcac.wildapricot.org.
