painting

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The department recognized students’ outstanding efforts with awards and scholarships

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Twenty years after the piece first arrived, Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda remains a source of peace and promise to viewers

Imagine a man jamming out to trap music in his studio as he rhythmically goes to town on a canvas. This is how Stephen Clawson, a senior art major at Brigham Young University, does his paintings in the basement of his grandmother’s home, also known as his studio. That same trap music could be Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby any other day of the week, a song with a slower and more melodic essence to it, but this is how Clawson likes to work. His work over the past seven years culminated into what he called an abstract art experience. The gallery at BYU was packed from wall-to-wall with his work. “Some of these things are horrible paintings, but I still wanted to put them up,” Clawson said. “My teachers didn’t like it, they just wanted me to do eight pieces.” For Clawson, art is somewhat of an escape. He added there is something crazy about painting, a feeling that he — at times — had trouble describing. Sometimes his work just seems to click for him, other times paintings seem flat and dull. The beauty of abstract art is that you can paint over things, or as Clawson likes to do, glue things on to the canvas in a collage style. One instance where a painting fell into place for him was when he had surgery and was still dealing with the pain. He was on some pain medicine to help recovery, and Clawson said he mixed colors to create an orange hue that seemed to fit perfectly on his canvas. He still gets that feeling sometimes, just without the pain medicine. Clawson also uses art as a way of expression. During his time at BYU, he had one instance where he was dealing with depression and he could not seem to get out of “the funk.” Read the full articlewritten by Ryne Williams at heraldextra.com.

Growing up on a small farm in Highland, Utah, Michael R. Workman (BFA ’86, MFA ’92) knew just what he wanted to do with his life: “Move to a rural area and paint the land. And I’ve been able to do exactly that.” Workman credits his BYU professors not only for teaching him the elements of art but for helping him believe he could make a living with his brush, which he does from his home in Spring City, Utah. “I approach landscapes with a poetic sensibility,” says Workman, who paints in the early-morning or late-evening light. “I’m trying to subtly communicate the spiritual qualities of the land.” Citing artists as eclectic as Rothko and Van Gogh as influences, Workman feels a special kinship with the tonalist painter George Inness, who felt the world was a profoundly spiritual place. “I never set out to be a tonalist, but that is what I seem to be,” he says. His treatment of landscapes shows a reverence for the places and subjects he depicts: “I hope my faith and belief in something beyond this life come through.” See the full article written by Andrew T. Bay at magazine.byu.edu.

As Thomander’s view of success expands and the lines between art and non-art blur, new creative possibilities emerge

The Harold B. Lee Library had some unusual visitors in October. Just inside the east doorways, miniature patrons admired postage stamp–sized art in one of alumna McKay Lenker Bayer’s (BA ’18) latest Tiny Art Shows. She held her first back in 2016 for a BYU art class, hanging self-made bitty art a few inches off the ground on Provo’s Center Street. Bayer added the final touches—a tiny spotlight and magnifying glass—and staked out a spot to watch. “I was amazed by the reaction—people squealed with joy, even lay down on the dirty sidewalk to get a good look,” says Bayer. See the full article by Lauren K. Lethbridge at magazine.byu.edu.

Greg S. (BFA ’17) and Jean Mcfarland Bean (BA ’17) were BYU dropouts. After a baby and an illness derailed their studies in the 1980s, they decided to leave BYU and head to Washington state. Greg, who had been working nights in Utah with the Springville Police Department, got a job as an officer in Bellevue, Washington, and was eventually promoted to detective. One day his lieutenant ordered him to a weeklong forensic-art class. Then a self-described “art imbecile,” Greg hadn’t put pencil to paper since middle school; this class began a lifelong journey into art. The teacher began by saying that art isn’t about the pencil in your hand, but about what you can see. Those words “literally changed my life and changed the way I saw people,” says Greg. By the end of the week, he could draw “a decent-looking human head,” and by the end of his career on the force, he had become the foremost forensic artist in the Seattle area, helping apprehend scores of criminals with his composite sketches. Meanwhile, Jean developed her own native interest in art. Thirty years after leaving Provo, the Beans received a clear prompting that, even though it was early, it was time for Greg to retire from the police force, and even though it was late, they needed to return to BYU. Read more at magazine.byu.edu More About the Beans “We work on commissions in our home studio together, we go out and paint together, we go to museums together,” says Greg about spending time with his wife, Jean. Their mutual love of art has provided a way for the Beans to grow together, including getting their art degrees at BYU as older students after early retirement. They’ve traveled to galleries all over and spent countless hours discussing artists and paintings. View some of their work at magazine.byu.edu

“When art does a good job, . . . it makes the world less lonely,” says Leslie Whyte Graff (BS ’96, MS ’01). “It makes it more meaningful.” Many of her generation-spanning images depict women performing domestic tasks. Society today “sees domestic work as something to be avoided, and so people become unhappy—not because the tasks are inherently lacking meaning, but because we hear the message, ‘You shouldn’t like this,’” she notes. Read more at BYU Magazine.