The Good Stuff about Goodwyne
by Jamey Landry
Inspiration aside, I am always fascinated by what motivates an artist. Writing these artist profiles for Inside Northside affords me the opportunity to meet many talented artists and ask them inane questions that eventually lead me to “the good stuff.” Stuff like their secrets to success or their foundation as an artist, or their drive—the intangible stuff that is often just beneath the surface of the art and artist. For me, it’s like panning for gold, and I am seldom disappointed when I find the good stuff.
“So, Mr. John,” I politely ask at the start of my interview with this issue’s cover artist, John Goodwyne, “Did you go to college or anything?”
“I went to Berhman High School,” he answers, adding that he took the only art classes offered, Art I and Art II, mostly to meet girls. Smart dude. He went on to Tulane and later took advanced courses at LSU. As he politely explained his academic history to me, I had no way of knowing he was setting me up for a literary thump on the head. I’ll even bet that in the coy innocence of his answer, even he didn’t realize what was about to hit me.
I was expecting the “usual” story of the struggling college art student who studied by day and painted by night to make ends meet—paint, paint, paint. But what I got was not what I was expecting. He didn’t take any art classes in college. “I’m an accountant and retired builder.” THUMP!! The good stuff! I couldn’t scribble notes fast enough.
“I started painting when I was 25, about 1960. I painted for about 10 years and when I went into the building business, I stopped painting for 30 years,” John recalls. About seven years ago, the urge to paint came back, and he has been producing works with his unique style ever since. That, gentle reader, is more of the good stuff. It’s good because it’s almost like a story of two star-crossed lovers meant for each other but separated by a lifetime apart until finally, rightfully, they are reunited and become inseparable.
When he started in his 20s, John painted with oils and acrylics. The style that he uses now is what he calls realistic impressionism. He explains that although he draws in a very tight style, he paints very loosely over the drawing. John feels the loose style better fits his preferred media of watercolours very well.
“My wife, Lynn, persuaded me to [switch to watercolours]; she likes watercolours. So I bought the stuff, and I’m trying, and I fell in love with watercolours,” John says. He notes that he’s attracted to the freedom of watercolours, but that freedom requires planning. “Don’t fight the paint,” he says, in a fatherly tone. “Once you put it down, don’t put your butt back in it! Most people want to keep stroking the paint like they do with acrylics or oil. That’s not how watercolours work. If you can keep telling yourself ‘Don’t go back in there,’ the paint is going to do what you want.”
John credits his wife and the almost iconic gaggle of painters that frequent Pirates Alley in New Orleans for the start of his painting career. A Navy veteran—he served on the first cruise of the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal when the Navy was transitioning to jets—John and his wife bought a house in New Orleans when he got out of the Navy. After deciding that those new walls needed decoration, an acquaintance suggested they go to Pirates Alley to see the paintings her husband created for sale. John remembers seeing about 25 paintings priced at the princely sum of $12.50 each.
“And that was plenty money for us way back then (early 1960s). When I got home, I said, ‘You know something, I think I can paint this thing.’ I went out and bought some brushes and paint and I copied those paintings and I started painting. I painted for 10 years before I went into the building business. But I had no luck selling them. If I sold 10 paintings in 10 years, I sold plenty, okay?” John chuckles. “It didn’t start happening to me until I went back [to painting] seven years ago, and even then it hadn’t caught on until I really started with the watercolours. People love the watercolours, you know.” Ah, necessity unlocks natural talent. Good stuff!
Although he paints what moves him, John is perhaps best known for his nautical themes painted directly onto navigation charts, a technique inspired by his wife. He draws and inks nautical elements such as lighthouses, boats and other distinctive features from Davy Jones’ locker directly onto ordinary navigation charts. Then he adds the finishing touch, watercolour washes applied using his “transparent” watercolour technique. Creating the navigation chart illustrations is painstaking because the paper the charts are printed on is not watercolour paper, but a paper similar to these pages in Inside Northside.
“I use transparent watercolour to make sure you can see through everything. It’s like a wash, but you have to watch yourself. If you just drop watercolour onto [the charts], the water makes it bubble. Once it starts making that bubble and you let it dry, it’s ruined. It makes a ripple in the paper. So what you’ve got to do is shrink that bubble from the start.” He uses a hairdryer to evenly evaporate the moisture and leave the pigments behind. It is delicate work, but work that John’s customers find most satisfying—he almost can’t keep up with the demand. “And I really believe that God’s hand has done this for me with my paintings. He’s given me something else to do as I get a little bit older.” Again, good stuff.
So what advice would John give his fellow artists hoping to enjoy the same sort of success he’s earned? “One thing I’ve always told them is your painting is not finished until it’s hanging on someone else’s wall. Don’t charge six or seven hundred dollars for a painting; charge a reasonable price. Take it out from underneath your bed and let somebody enjoy it. That’s my philosophy.”
That’s the best stuff right there.
John Goodwyne’s work is available for purchase at the Vineyard Restaurant and St. Romain Interiors, both in Covington.
