Juanita Wyman transitions from teacher to student in lifelong pursuit of artistic passion

Juanita Wyman scolded herself for not following the sage advice of a memorable art teacher.

"If you just do a sketch every day ... why don't I do that?" Wyman said during a recent visit to the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri in Cape Girardeau, where she's a member of the co-op.

The teacher in question received undergraduate and graduate degrees from Southeast Missouri State University and went on to be named the Missouri high-school art teacher of the year in 1998 before retiring a year later.

The teacher's warm style and emphasis on art basics affected numerous students over 30 years at De Soto High School, including one pupil who went on to become a professional artist with works hanging on walls around the globe.

On this particular day, one of Wyman's own paintings hung on a wall nearby in the exhibit. It was a wintry scene of her hometown of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, a warm presentation of a building-lined street coated in snow.

Juanita Wyman poses for a portrait inside the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri in downtown Cape Girardeau.Laura Simon

She liked the looseness of the painting, created through the combination of watercolor and pastel, which has become her signature style. But her free-flowing thoughts held the occasional reprimand, one seeded in the words of the teacher.

"I use to tell my students, 'Do a sketch every day,'" Wyman said.

Yes, Wyman's trying to practice what she preached.

In retirement, she has the time to pursue her lifelong loves -- art and travel, two complementary passions.

Wyman formerly used an array of media, including watercolor and pastel, but picked up a technique that involved both at a workshop in Florence, Italy, about 10 years ago. The technique involves laying in a background in watercolor and layering over it with pastel.

"I do my pastels like I do my oils," Wyman said of layering colors.

Wyman had an interest in the arts, growing up in the historic town of Ste. Genevieve, where she attended Valle Catholic High School before attending Southeast.

"I never thought of anything else other than being a teacher, although I was going to be a music teacher," Wyman said.

While taking general-studies classes, however, art arrived before music, prompting a quick decision.

"I decided, 'That's it. That's what I'm going to do,'" Wyman said.

She married, had two children and largely put her personal art on hold.

"Teaching, there were too many other things going on, from family to kids, sports, to doing floats to proms and dances; I did it all," Wyman said. "It was just too much. You just couldn't do it all. Usually I'd work about eight hours, actually about 14 hours, and then you go home and take care of your family. You don't have time to paint.

"And when I did do some drawings and paintings, and I would do a couple a year, and I would enter them into some of the Missouri state teacher's shows, and I did well, but I'm painting these things on my dining-room table -- that's where my easel was."

She said she painted just enough in the classroom to lend credibility to her teaching.

One of her students, Ali Cavanaugh, a 1991 graduate, had Wyman for three years before getting a full-ride scholarship to Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Cavanaugh since has developed her own style of watercolor portraits on clay and has been commissioned to do portraits for the New York Times and Time magazine.

"She could whip out pastels and paintings for us in school, and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is the greatest artist on Earth,'" Cavanaugh said about Wyman with a laugh when contacted by telephone. "I thought she was so amazing. I still think she's amazing, and she is."

Cavanaugh, now 43, said students in general not only were amaze at Wyman's artistic ability, but were drawn to her "magnetic" personality, one that always managed to see something positive in students' work and brought out their best. The teacher's love of the arts was infectious, with Cavanaugh recalling Wyman-led student trips to Southeast Missouri State University, the St. Louis Art Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.

"It was that extra step that she took," Cavanaugh said. "I think it made an impression on a lot of people. There were a lot of people in my grade that went into the arts in some form or another, and I think we would all have the same story. Like, Juanita was kind of the one that got our eyes open to the art world, in how to look at work and how to critique work and how to apply all those things to our own work."

The encouragement has come full circle, with Cavanaugh, now living in Ste. Genevieve, lending advice to Wyman in finding the eyes of the art world.

"She was helping me try to see what I needed to do to get better or build my body of work," Wyman said. "Or if I wanted to, what I need to get exposed."

One of Cavanaugh's suggestions to Wyman, and to any aspiring artist, is to concentrate on one particular medium, where repetition leads to refinement to the point it can be both attention grabbing and associated with the artist.

Wyman usually works off photos she's taken, producing softer versions of landscapes that often involve a figure. Her painting from an old photograph of a farmer on a tractor won Best of Show out of about 180 entries in a contest sponsored by Presbyterian Manor, and is featured in the organization's 2017 calendar.

"I'm trying to do more figurative work, not portraits," Wyman said. "But I like to do people, places and things of working people. Everyday kind of people in their environment."

She's building a reputation for her European scenes and the Old World architecture, photos taken from her trips.

"The thing that's neat about her work is that she's got a story there," Cavanaugh said. "She's creating that scene because she's been there."

Which makes Ste. Genevieve, where she has served several two-year terms as the art guild president since joining in 1999, a perfect fit to her style, again combining architecture and history. She's at home in the town and in her studio.

"Ali's making a living at it," Wyman said. "At this point, I just want to paint what I enjoy and sell enough to pay for my hobby, so to speak, and know that people appreciate what I am doing. I think it's a good retirement thing to do, but I don't want it to be a job where you have to force yourself. Now I just do it when I want to do it."

She has the perfect colors on her palette: time, talent and teacher.

jbreer@semissourian.com

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