Local artist displays in Beacon

     The Howland Center is delighted to present the paintings of Vivian Gaines Tanner-Paxton in an exhibition to show through Sunday, March 1st.
     February is the month of the year in which all the people of this county may specifically focus on the history of African-Americans, and in particular, focus on the enormous contributions and influences that African-Americans have made and continue to make on the life and culture of America. Artists have been a major part of that collective contribution. The Howland Center lends its voice to the annual national attention directed toward acknowledging history by having thc outstanding artist, Vivian Gaines Tanner Paxton, exhibit her beautiful paintings.
     Ms. Paxton began her artwork as a result of a profound dream which indicated that she should illustrate a book of poetry she had written. From that moment, an enormous amount of creative energy has emerged from the depths of her being. Ms. Paxton speaks of the spiritual quest she has long pursued to find a better meaning to life, to achieve understanding and find fulfillment… not only for herself but to enhance and enrich the lives of others. It is this essential spiritual quality one experiences when talking with Ms. Paxton and which is readily seen in the prolific amount of paintings of landscapes, flowers and most other subjects. Ms. Paxton calls her inspiration to paint , Divine. It is a Divine treasure which exists in everyone. "Seek and ye shall find" is an adage she projects to all who will listen.
     Ms. Paxton is a self-taught artist. No formal art education has guided her hand. She allows the energy which flows from within to be her guide. As a result, paintings of tranquility, the beauty of nature and connectedness with the universe are on the canvas for everyone to enjoy  and with which to relate the experience of her Divine source.
     This past year saw Ms. Paxton win the 1997 Dutchess  County Executive's Arts Award for
individual artist. Once described as "the best kept secret in the HudsonValley," Ms. Paxton's following
has grown from a nucleus of enthusiasts in the Hudson Valley to a steadily expanding circle of art lovers and collectors in the United States and Europe. Her work has been exhibited at The Vassar College Art Center Gallery, The Newburgh Art Nook, Barrett House in Poughkeepsie, the Manhattan Gallery of Fine Arts, the Bardavon Opera House and numerous other galleries in addition to local banks and inns. Ms. Paxton serves on the Boards of several Dutchess County agencies among which are the Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce, Grace Smith House and she has given unselfishly, not only of her time and efforts, but also her works of art. She has set a standard for making a difference in  people's lives with her concern, love  and compassion for all people.
     Ms. Paxton lives in Hyde Park with her husband, John, and together they run the Tanner-Paxton Art Gallery.

Prize winning inspired artist sees paintings as her garden

By JANET RUHE
     HYDE PARK -- "Tanner Paxton Gallery," says the sign on the winding road that runs by the narrow 3-story Victorian poised atop a country hill. It's the home of Vivian Gaines Tanner Paxton and her husband, John Paxton and its light-filled rooms are stacked and hung, floors to ceilings, with a thousand painted landscapes -- gardens, waterfalls, lakes, seas
     Tanner Paxton, winner of this year's Dutchess County Arts Council Award for Individual Artist and creator of the landscapes, says they are her Gardens of Eden. And at this point they are hanging, not only in her house, but in the homes and offices of art-lovers in the US and Europe. Senator Stephen Saland has one in his Albany office.
     Some of the "gardens" are reminiscent of peaceful, romantic vistas by the 19th Century painters of the Hudson River School. Those painters hiked deep into the Catskills and the Adirondacks to commune with nature and record the views.
     But the 72-year old Tanner Paxton, born in Newport, RI, raised in Newburgh and a resident of Hyde Park for more than 30 years, has never been a hiker or a traveler; and what she paints also does not come directly from anything she sees  on her seven-and-a-half acres.
     I'm not an outdoor person," she say's. "I'm never outside. I never sat out at that picnic table this summer."
     The Hudson River painters also studied extensively. Tanner Paxton never attended art school. She used to run a beauty salon in her house. During those years, she wrote poems -- in fact, she still does. ("My mother says it should be pronounced 'poem'" she chuckles. "Not 'pome.' She’s 92.") And sometimes she made pencil portraits of clients at the salon. But about 20 years ago, she recalls, "The way to paint came to me in a dream."
     She went out and bought paints and started producing seascapes with big 
clipper ships. She'd never been to sea. She says, "I had this fascination with clipper ships." Now she works in oil, acrylic, pen -and-ink, watercolor. "Everyone said, 'You can't just do watercolors,'" she comments, "but I just went out and bought the paints and they're the easiest things to do." She freely mixes media, attaining intriguing and soothing depths, rich colors and luminosity.
     She recalls, "I heard a man say on TV that quote of Thomas Edison's, that genius is 100 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration, but I think it's the other way around. I think we make things harder than they are."
     For Tanner Paxton, who still does pencil sketches sometimes and also models clay heads which she calls her "doodles," painting the beauty she envisions was and is simple, but getting her art into the public eye has been another story. Maybe it's been the 10 percent perspiration.
     "When I first started out and went to galleries, people didn't want to feature black painters. I couldn't get into black galleries because  my work wasn't 'black enough.'" She adds, "It doesn't matter. It happened anyway."

' But I just went out and bought the paints and they're the easiest things to do"
--Tanner Paxton

     It happened because she had faith in herself and her art, and she got it up on the walls of banks and other businesses such as the American Bounty restaurant at the Culinary Institute in Poughkeepsie. She's had shows at Barrett House and the Cunneen Hackett Center in Poughkeepsie.
     Always committed to community welfare, she contributed her work to fund-raisers for Grace Smith House, the NAACP and other causes. That’s the spirit that keeps her young -- "I have a bad knee. After 50, something's bound to go bad, but I don't let anything stop me" has kept her productive and constructive.
     "I do fund-raisers for churches and community groups,' she says. "I don't make differences. I don't think you can say you believe in God and make differences."
     She feels her art is a gift of spirit, but she stresses,  "We have strange notions of what it is to be spiritual. But you just have to be ordinary and live your life. But the love has to be there.”
     Now her work is represented in Gumbo Ya Ya, a book on African-American artists. Currently her paintings are displayed at Frederick's, a Poughkeepsie  restaurant, as well as in her home gallery, where many of them bear a little red seal that means they've been sold. She can't find it within herself to fix astronomical prices on them, but the prices are respectable.
     Her husband of two years, John Paxton, an actor and professor of speech at Dutchess County Community College, is helping her deal with the business end of things. 'I'm not able to qualify or quantify my contribution" he says, but we've been trying to increase our contacts and exposure and expand our market. We've considered entering competitive shows. We, have a website with examples of the paintings on it. 'The fellow who did it for us has listed it on 19 or 20 search engines. I'm not able yet to evaluate its impact."
     He also keeps a mailing list and sends out press releases and invitations. "Our gallery is open 1-4 p.m., Saturdays," he says. "We just participated in the Dutchess County Arts Council Crafts Show at Vassar. We don't usually participate in crafts fairs because a lot of them are like large-scale garage sales, but we were assured of the quality of the artists who come to this show."
     He commented that a lot of people who passed through the show were familiar with Tanner Paxton and her work.
     This growing success has not changed Tanner Paxton's adherence to her original vision. "When I close my eyes, I see a beautiful blue," she says. And this blue is present in almost all of her paintings.
     She feels close to the spirit of her son, who had cerebral palsy and died at the age of 37. She remembers how he would help her when she used to make pencil portraits: "Ma, that nose isn't right Ma, you have to do the chin differently." She says, "he was very good at that."
      Of the time when colors and light became brilliant for her, she says "I'd be taking my son to the training center. I'd be going over the hill to the college. And everything just took on more beauty: and I'm looking at the sun on the road and the sun is like melted gold, and I'm thinking, 'How are all these wonders happening to me?'"

ARTIST'S MIND

VIVIAN GAINES TANNER

Age -- 68
Home -- Hyde Park
Profession -- Artist and poet 
Influence -- Divine Inspiration. 
Showing - By appointment at the Vivian Games Tanner and John Paxton Gallery (phone 452.0965 )
Other exhibits --Paintings on permanent display at the Dutchess County Golf and Country Club; currently on exhibit at the Culinary Institute of America, January through April.
 

     Art and poetry are for me a spiritual quest to find a better meaning to life, an understanding, a
fulfillment -- a fulfillment not for self but to enhance and enrich the lives of others, It is a service
and means to bring love and beauty into the hearts of many.
     Poetry and art came to me in a dream fashion. They are my divine gifts. It has always been a
wonder to be able to paint with nothing in front of me to look at: painting from that vast reservoir of
pictures embedded within my very brain, to look inward and see colorful scenes of just anything
imaginable and paint them. Not necessarily what I see at the moment, no special sequence
     The paintings are never painted in a particular season. For instance, I love to do winter scenes in
the summer-time, sunsets in the dark of night, night pictures in the early morning, just flowing with hardly any effort at all from within: truly a wonder!
     Sometimes subtle, always sublime
     Poetry, which came first, also flowed into my consciousness with little or no effort on my part.
Maybe a certain situation or a beautiful scene would trigger a poem. Most are about love and
brotherhood, nature and the divine understood: the very essence of truth as I know it. 
     I remember as a child always having this zest for loving and caring, which I hardly understood at such a tender young age It comes together now in my later years The very best one has to offer is of one's self.
     I offer my poetry and art -- which I share and give to advance and enhance in whatever way
pleases -- to organizations and individuals, non-selectively, as all are equally important.
     We all have a part of us that is divine. It will open the mind in a way, sometimes subtle, always sublime. If we open our hearts and allow it to creep in, we win life's treasures. 
     My treasures, my art and poetry, I share with you. I care, I do. All of the above is true. Open your heart, let love flow. You will view life with a different glow. It is never too late to start. Good wishes and thoughts straight from the heart. There is a divine treasure in all of us. Seek and ye shall find, as the adage goes.
     Another is: love thy neighbor as thyself. Stand up and be counted. We're all people. Remember,
love is the key to release all those wonderful treasures.
     As I said a few years back in the acceptance speech after receiving the Black Achievement Award: Divine gifts are free, just waiting to be bestowed on anyone who has enough love in their hearts to receive them
     I beg of you, release your treasures