Bodies of Work

She paints only women because her husband draws the line at naked male models.

Blackwell started painting with oils after her boyfriend (now her husband) gave her a set for graduation from Charlotte’s Northwest School of the Arts. As Lankard favors the creamy texture of his vintage film, she prefers the creaminess of oils because it allows her to create realistic representations, particularly skin’s luminescence, through dozens of layers of blended paint.

She taught herself to work with them because she says she learns more by messing up and starting over. Painting landscapes to develop technique, she soon became bored and switched to portraits of friends. Then three years ago she read about an artist who had returned to the same subject she drew as a child. Blackwell immediately thought of her melty people.

After working for a year on that theme, producing enough paintings for a show but not revealing her work to anyone until she finished, she had her first solo exhibit in 2007 at The ArtHouse gallery in Charlotte’s NoDa neighborhood. More than a dozen shows have followed across North Carolina, but she says she now sells most of her paintings through her Web site, many to customers in Spain, birthplace of famed surrealist painter Salvador Dali.

Lately, she also paints abstract pieces when she becomes frustrated with the details of painting people, though she incorporates her melty strands into these, too.

Some people find her pieces beautiful, while others recoil. “Which is good, because that’s some kind of reaction,” she says, “and the worst thing for an artist is for someone to just walk by without thinking anything.”

All who see the paintings seem to get some meaning from them, she says, and they make a point of sharing their insights with the artist. Regardless of how the public receives her pieces, Blackwell says the melty people fulfill her with their endless possibilities.

“I will never get bored.”

Lankard and Blackwell say they feel at home in Charlotte’s arts community, but that they want the city to more fully embrace contemporary art.

Blackwell says she knows fellow local artists working in more traditional forms who easily support themselves from their pieces here, but that for contemporary artists like herself, most sales come from outside Charlotte. Still, she has a goal of making a living by her art in the next two years.

Lankard says he hopes to see Charlotte “engaging arts of all kinds, not just the kinds held in marbled halls.”

Visitors to the DOMA exhibit have reacted positively to Lankard’s unconventional nudes, says gallery owner Gabrielle Larew. In fact, women bought most of those sold through the show. But she says some people who inquired about renting the gallery for events expressed concern about pictures of naked women on the walls.

“This is the Bible Belt,” Larew says. “Some people think that should never be depicted as art. But a lot of people said they reminded them of Greek sculpture.”

Both Lankard and Blackwell say they experience a hunger for art in Charlotte, and an arts community that’s trying to connect with that audience. They cite art crawl gallery tours, neighborhood arts districts such as NoDa and a public art walking tour, though Lankard chuckles at the idea of the latter, saying he can’t see a person practically walking from parts of the South End to NoDa.

Lankard sees more activity in the central business district than he did growing up in Charlotte, but he says he’d like to see that spread across the city, with major art centers forming relationships with small galleries.

“I don’t think Charlotte is anywhere near where it could be,” he says. “But I definitely see great effort toward that. I’d like to be a part of that.”

Bryce Lankard

Current Exhibits:
“Bodies: Steel and Skin” at DOMA Gallery through February, 1310 S. Tryon St., Charlotte, and “The Romance of the Road: Photographs in Search of the Promised Land,” through April 11 at The Light Factory, 345 N. College St., Charlotte.

Purchasing and information:
Visit Lankard’s Web site here or contact DOMA Gallery at (704) 333-3420. His photographs range from $600 to $1,200.

Katherine Blackwell

Upcoming Exhibits:
A solo show at Green Rice Gallery, 451 E. 36th St. in Charlotte’s NoDa neighborhood, April 2-30.

Purchasing and information:
Visit Blackwell’s Web site here or Artworks on Main, 165 N. Main St., Mooresville. Her paintings range from $500 to $4,000.

~ Hannah Mitchell