Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 15, 1992 TAG: 9203160134
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHIE DICKENSON
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
She began painting seriously in her mid-30s, but the wait was worth it. At 50 she is a prolific, well-respected and highly saleable abstract painter whose work hangs in homes and corporate offices as far away as Berlin.
Starting a new career at midlife seems in keeping with Dillard's attitude toward her work. "If you don't go out on a limb, you don't get anywhere," she said.
Dillard has taken up realistic landscape painting and from there moved even further afield to realistic paintings based on literature.
She began painting as a child.
"I was always interested in art," she explained. "But I did a little in high school and quit, a little in college and quit, then a little in my late 20s and quit . . .
"I think for some artists there's a certain maturing that has to take place, and that was true for me."
In the meantime she earned a bachelor's degree in education from Austin College in Sherman, Texas, taught school for five years and started a family.
Her husband, John, a chemistry professor, came to Virginia Tech in the late '60s. With her son and daughter at ages 3 and 6, Dillard enrolled at Tech and received a degree in art in 1977.
She sold her first piece in 1975; since then her abstracts have brought up to $1,000 each. She has won awards, participated in juried and invitational shows and given one- and two-person shows all over Virginia, as well as in North Carolina and Tennessee.
Denise Cormany, owner of Cormany and Turner Gallery in Roanoke, said Dillard "is one of my best-sellers. A lot of people like her work because it's easy to look at over a long period of time. There's always something new to see in the painting."
Cormany herself owns three of Dillard's pieces - "actually, one is mine and two are my 5-year-old daughter's. She just loves her work."
Art critic Ann Weinstein said, "I have had the pleasure of watching Martha Dillard grow from a student to a maturing artist."
Dillard's abstracts, Weinstein once observed, "convey a physical sense of situation and place. Even at their most atmospheric, they are solid, assured, and sometimes very beautiful."
Dillard's love for abstract painting is clear as she talks about her work.
"For me," she said, "abstract work comes out of some intuitive place, a place inside the artist." It's not usually something she can plan, sketch out or make happen - a fact that sometimes makes deadlines harrowing.
"As with any art, you might have a concept in mind, but the piece has its own life. . . . You have to listen to the painting."
Dillard extends this theory to areas that are not typically considered artistic. For example, she sees the same process at work in her husband's problem-solving and chemistry experiments.
Dillard is aware that many people are uncomfortable with abstract art, "and I think I know why," she said. "I think it goes back to Genesis, to Adam and Eve.
"God gave them dominion over the garden and told them to name everything. I think people still want to be able to name things, in order to feel in control. They want to be able to look at something and know what it is."
It used to bother her when people would look at her paintings and say such things as, "Oh yes, I see an arm there," when no arm was intended. Now she doesn't mind. "I don't think the artwork is complete until other people see it. They bring their own sensibilities to it."
She titles all her abstracts, but only after they are completed. The titles often come from literature and many of them reflect her feelings about art.
"Caution is the Enemy" and "Abstract Art is a Form of Mysticism" are quotations from Robert Motherwell, a New York artist and writer. She frequently uses lines from T.S. Eliot's poetry. On the other hand, some of her paintings have been titled by her children.
"The titles don't mean the same to other people, anyway," she explained. "The title is a hint to the viewer."
Despite her love for abstract painting and her success with it, a couple of years ago Dillard took her work into a new realm - realistic landscape painting.
"In 1988 I suggested to two friends that we do a show together - just to push ourselves and each other."
At the time, Carole Davis was a watercolor artist and Jan Bos was a weaver.
"Carole suggested that we have a focus for the show. I said, `Well, you both live out in this beautiful Ellett Valley. Let's paint the valley.' And we became landscape painters."
Such a change was both risky and scary for Dillard. "There are lots of good landscape painters here. I didn't want to became a second-rate landscape artist. But none of us could back out - we were committed."
The three got to work, separately and together, spending most of their time in the valley of the Roanoke River's North Fork.
Bos, Dillard's longtime friend and fan, praised her energy and enthusiasm. "Martha was the one who had the vision, even though she lives in town. Living in the valley all the time, Carole and I didn't see the possibilities the way Martha did."
Dillard's first piece for the show was really 30 individual paintings on wood panels; together they form a composite view of the valley.
The paintings are not completely realistic. "That's on purpose," she explained. "Everyone who sees that valley has a different perception of it.
"There's the person who has lived all her life in her grandmother's cabin; then the new resident in a modern home; there are visitors just passing through; there are golfers. And the valley looks different depending on whether you're standing on top of the mountain, or down in the woods. I've painted the valley in a way that forces you to see it differently."
Dillard thinks her idea that the valley seems different to each beholder will be confirmed by a series of tape-recorded interviews that she, Davis, and Bos are conducting with residents. The interviews will be incorporated in their show, which is ready after three years of work.
The show includes four large pieces by Dillard, acrylics by Davis and charcoal drawings by Bos. The three are exploring locations large enough to exhibit their work.
They have called the new show "Watershed." The valley itself, Dillard pointed out, is a watershed. "Also, we realized that we live on the [eastern] Continental Divide." Most important, though, is that "the show is a watershed for us."
While Dillard was working on the landscape project, she began - by serendipity - something else new. It became a series of realistic paintings based on the short stories of Flannery O'Connor. O'Connor is a Southern writer known for unforgettable grotesque characters who, for Dillard, behave so stupidly and selfishly "that I just want to shake them."
Dillard's work on the series began when she was facing a deadline for a one-person abstract show and "just couldn't get anything going." Thinking she might focus the show on a literary work, she stood hopefully in front of her bookshelves.
"That little volume of O'Connor stories just sort of backed its way off the shelf at me." She didn't like the gory endings and the characters made her want to scream at them, but she began to get very strong visual images from her reading.
Instead of abstracts, she started painting things like a wooden leg, a river baptism and a purple-feathered hat.
"I'm still so close to them, and they're so new for me, that I can't tell whether or not they're good." Nevertheless, with six completed, she can't seem to stop painting them.
Because of her deep love for abstract painting, Dillard said she will never stop doing it, but she will continue with her realistic work, too. It's satisfying, she said, and in a way easier than abstract. "With realistic painting, you know where you're going - you can plan and sketch."
Beyond the "Watershed" show, Dillard would like to do site-specific landscapes by commission. Once she becomes confident in her work on O'Connor, she would like to see it used in conjunction with the teaching of O'Connor's stories.
Above all, Dillard intends to keep trying new things.
"I'd hate to think that I've already done my best work. I'm still growing and developing - I hope I never quit."
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by CNB