Southeast Missouri snapshots

Jackson artist Herb Wickham is fascinated by the ghosts of Southeast Missouri.

Where others see decaying, abandoned barns and farmhouses, he sees a story that needs to be told in oil.

"What attracts me about these farm scenes, the rusty roofs and broke-down boards ... I try to imagine who lived there," Wickham says, looking at one of his many landscapes of the old farms that dot the area. "There's a story in all of them. I try to get a feeling for what it was like to live there."

For decades, Wickham has made a name as a visual storyteller, documenting the natural beauty of Southeast Missouri and the modifications man has made to that beauty. Broken-down bars, abandoned gas stations and factories and old Ozark mills figure prominently in his work as examples of our past that are being retaken by nature.

Wickham's work can be seen every month at the arts council as part of the Visual Arts Cooperative's regular exhibitions, but he rarely puts on his own solo exhibitions. This month 41 of Wickham's paintings will be on display at the arts council galleries as Wickham is featured along with eclectic, colorful Oklahoma artist Sandra Midgett starting with an opening reception tonight.

"Razing Old Marquette," oil by Herb Wickham

Wickham taught art in Jackson for decades, instructing many of the area's best known artists. In 2005 he was given the Otto Dingeldein Award from the arts council for his work as a teacher, but in retirement Wickham's name is most closely associated with his landscapes.

"I don't think there's any artist who speaks to our regional landscape the way that Herb Wickham does," said Delilah Tayloe, director of the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri. "So many times I've seen where people are stopped dead in their tracks because they know what he's painted, they've seen it."

From snapshots taken along old country roads, trails and other places, Wickham creates oils that speak to his love of the area's natural beauty. The arts council exhibition will show the public Wickham's work from the past several years in a retrospective.

Art became a passion of Wickham's in his early life -- he discovered his love for painting as a 17-year-old on a football scholarship at Southeast Missouri State University. He later studied under the late Jake Wells to perfect his craft. Despite his reputation as one of the area's premiere landscape artists, Wickham remains humble (he says, "you can't measure up to nature") and extremely personable. Ask him about the scenes depicted in his paintings, and you may be in for hours of stories. He'll also tell you he can't count the number of times he's started a painting only to scrap it because the work didn't meet his own expectations. And where many landscape artists prefer the vibrant colors of spring, Wickham prefers the dull grays of late fall and early winter.

"When everybody gripes about how it's gray and dull, that's when I paint," he said. "I like gray, and there's so much of it. I learned early on that, if you try to paint the fall colors ... your stuff looks cheap."

Herb Wickham of Jackson stood by his oil painting "Turkey Creek Trail," which is part of his show in Gallery 100 at the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri, 32 N. Main St. (Fred Lynch)

For Wickham, it's not the technical aspects of the craft that fascinate him (he rarely spends much time on a landscape), it's capturing a piece of natural and human history.

From an abandoned farmhouse near Scopus to the old Marquette cement plant, the Old McKendree Church, the back road from Leopold to Laflin and springs and dams on the Eleven Point River, Wickham has documented these scenes, probably hundreds over the years. With camera in hand he drives the roads less traveled, looking for something that catches his eye (and gathering up stories about his adventures along the way). The 73-year-old estimates he's painted Bollinger Mill some three dozen times in different seasons, from different perspectives.

Since he retired in 1991, Wickham has had a lot of time to produce his landscapes, but this is his first show at the arts council since the organization's earliest days. In addition to solo exhibitions by Wickham and Midgett, the arts council will display work created in a recent paper mosaic workshop taught by Russell Irwin and submissions for the ArtsCape poster contest. The winner of the poster contest will also be announced at the opening reception tonight.

msanders@semissourian

335-6611, extension 182