Nine Fine Artists: 29 years of painting, friendship and keeping each other honest

What began as a lunch after an art exhibition in Port Stanley has grown into a 29-year friendship – one painting, critique and cup of coffee at a time – for the group known at the Nine Fine Artists.

By Duncan MacDonald

Sometimes the most important thing an artist can have is another artist sitting across the room.

Someone who can look at a painting with fresh eyes. Someone who can say, “That works,” when the painter is beginning to doubt it. Or, perhaps more importantly, someone willing to say, “Stop. Don’t touch it anymore.”

For the Nine Fine Artists, that kind of conversation has been at the heart of their relationship since 1997.

The group was born during a lunch at the Kettle Creek Inn in Port Stanley. Members of the London Brush & Palette Club had gone to see an exhibition in May of that year and decided to continue the conversation over lunch. Helen Bezeau Kajan suggested creating a smaller group of artists who could meet regularly, exchange ideas, discuss techniques and look at one another’s work. Three other artists were invited to join. Two months later, the first meeting of what became known as the Nine Fine Artists was held.

The name has lasted almost as long as the friendship, and so has the basic idea.

The artists meet in one another’s homes, bringing along paintings, ideas and questions. They discuss exhibitions, materials and techniques, but much of the value comes from simply seeing how other painters approach the same problems.

The nine artists do not all paint the same way. Far from it. They work in oil, acrylic, watercolour and pastel. Their subjects, influences and styles differ, and those differences are part of what makes the group work. Rather than trying to bring everyone toward a single definition of what constitutes a good painting, the members have learned to appreciate the different ways each artist sees and works.

For one member, the pleasure is in the physical act of painting – putting colour on canvas.

“I like the painting process. Putting colour on canvas. Not so much the drawing.”

That preference has led to conversations within the group about the value of preparation. Drawing can help establish proportions. An underpainting can establish the values – the light and dark structure of a work – before colour is applied.

Another lesson has become a kind of shorthand for the importance of understanding light. “To have light, there must be dark.”

It is a basic principle, but one that can be easy to overlook. Highlights become meaningful because of the shadows around them. The dark passages of a painting can be every bit as important as its brightest areas.

For another member, however, the challenge is knowing when those rules should be set aside. Traditional instruction has its place, but different teachers can offer very different ways of approaching a painting. One approach is to break a painting into sections, completing one area at a time. Another is to avoid a detailed drawing altogether and instead concentrate on the relationship between masses, proportions, colours and tones across the entire surface.

What matters, the artist has learned, is discovering the method that allows the individual painter to work most effectively. That becomes particularly important when the goal is not precise realism, but the feeling of a place. One member describes having an intention that is less focused on total or detailed depiction and more concerned with capturing a feeling or mood. There is admiration for the technical skill and realism evident in the work of fellow members, but an impressionistic or expressionistic approach can sometimes communicate more effectively.

That can mean resisting the temptation to make a painting technically perfect. Sometimes, making a painting “better” can actually make it worse, one might say. A painter may return to a work, correcting details and refining passages, only to discover that the freshness and feeling that attracted others to it in the first place have disappeared. Watercolour can make that dilemma particularly apparent.

A painting that looks unfinished to its creator may appear complete to someone else. That is where the group’s critiques become especially useful. Members can bring in a work that is still in progress and ask the other artists a deceptively difficult question: Is it done?

Fresh eyes can provide an answer the painter may not be able to see alone. A former watercolour teacher described one member as an “intuitive painter,” recognizing a tendency to be overly critical and to compare the work with that of others.

The advice was simple: sometimes, enough is enough. Knowing when to stop can be as important as knowing what to add.

The artist’s intuitive approach does not mean abandoning traditional methods altogether. The basics remain important, and the painter continues to work representationally, with an interest in impressionist and expressionist approaches, particularly in landscapes.

But there are times when the process begins without a pencil line. A location encountered during a plein air painting session might provide the starting point. The artist begins with an idea, feeling or emotion and tries to remain in the moment rather than becoming overwhelmed by technical rules.

“Plunge in and hope for the best” is part of that philosophy. The group provides a useful counterbalance to that uncertainty.

Nine different artists mean nine sets of eyes, experiences and opinions. One person may notice a problem with proportion. Another may respond to the colour. Someone else may see that the painting’s strongest quality is its mood and warn against changing it.

The critiques are not about forcing artists to conform. They are about helping them understand what they are already doing. That distinction has helped the group survive changes in membership and the evolution of individual artistic practices.

Over 29 years, the artists have changed. Their interests have changed. Their techniques have developed. Paintings that might once have seemed impossible have become part of their practices.

Yet the purpose of the group remains much the same as it was during that lunch in Port Stanley. The Nine Fine Artists also maintain an important social connection. Their meetings are not simply formal critiques. They are opportunities for friends to spend time together with people who understand the particular frustrations, discoveries and satisfactions that come with making art.

For artists accustomed to spending hours alone in front of a canvas, that companionship can be invaluable. The group has also continued to exhibit its work, looking for new venues where audiences can see the range of styles and approaches represented by its members.

As the Nine Fine Artists approach their 30th year, their longevity is perhaps their most remarkable achievement. There are plenty of reasons an artists’ group might not last. People move. Interests change. Creative differences emerge. Meetings become difficult to schedule. This one has endured.

Perhaps that is because the group has never required its members to become the same kind of artist. Instead, it has given them something harder to find: a community where difference is useful.

One artist can teach another about drawing. Another can offer a lesson in colour or values. Someone can provide encouragement when confidence is low. And occasionally, someone can deliver the most valuable advice of all — put down the brush.

Twenty-nine years after Helen Bezeau Kajan first suggested the idea, the Nine Fine Artists continue to meet, paint, critique and encourage one another.

The artists may return to their individual studios alone, but they don’t have to figure everything out alone. Sometimes the conversation simply continues on the canvas.

The Nine Fine Artists (in its current manifestation) comprises Debra Bailey, Gail Gifford, Helen Bezeau Kajan, Gayle (Culliton) Kumpf, Anne McLean, Susan Moore, Toni Ciantar Poole, Joyce Rintoul and Michele Stewart.

Please join us on Saturday, Sept. 19, from 1-4 p.m. at the St. Marys Station Gallery to meet the artists and celebrate the opening of this exhibition.