THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 26, 1996 TAG: 9609260030
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 185 lines
EARLIER THIS WEEK, as his new show opened in Portsmouth, Charles K. Sibley - among the region's most significant artists - roamed the gallery displaying 23 paintings of misery, escapism and human folly.
These were not the salable, decorative landscape paintings he has sometimes made to pad his art professor's wage. On view at Tidewater Community College's Visual Arts Center were psychologically penetrating images of people.
As he discussed these works, Sibley - who, at 74, has painted for nearly 50 years - was alternately critical and praising of these latest efforts.
The show could be seen as divided into ``mirrors'' and ``windows.'' The windows were paintings that looked out at the world, and commented on it. The mirrors reflected the artist's inner life.
A rear wall held eight works from his never-shown series on AIDS painted in 1992 and 1993. His one and only painting about war - the 1995 ``Sarajevo,'' which won best in show at Norfolk's Irene Leache exhibit earlier this year - hung nearby.
There was a nightmarish scene of a dwarf with two dogs, inspired by beggars encountered on one of his many trips to South America.
And a group of swimmers at the glassy shallows - a range of humanity with their feet barely wet, massed together as though afraid to venture deeper.
He exhibited paintings of a miserable, fat woman and of a tourist with aching feet. A vain, silly woman blessed, apparently, with a lack of self-awareness. An able seamstress at her labors, inspired by his mother's Depression-era job taken on to help his struggling clan during his childhood in Huntington, W.Va.
And there was Sibley himself.
The oil on canvas he completed only weeks ago, titled ``Double Self Portrait,'' was a nearly nude portrait of the artist as a saggy old man.
He spared himself no punches.
As Sibley gazed at the picture, he described what he saw.
``The multiple wrinkles, the bulging belly. That's what I am,'' he said.
``I'm going to be 75 soon, on December 20th. A quarter of a century. I used to think if I made it to 75, I'd be willing to die. And now I realize the only thing that'll satisfy any of us is immortality - absolutely, with the gods,'' he said, laughing gently.
In his starched blue shirt, his beard shaved off for the first time in years, Sibley looked younger and more fit than his self-portrait.
``Well, that's how I felt about it,'' he said. About growing old, he means.
His health, in fact, has not been perfect. He tires easily because of a hereditary blood disease - sideroblastic anemia, a condition that usually leads to leukemia. He has a few other minor ailments.
Yet his art output has not slowed appreciably. And the bite of his images still breaks the skin.
The nude figure, and impending death, have been two of his favorite themes through the years. Yet here he was looking directly at himself, as though on a dare.
``When you get old, you are awfully ugly, compared to the youth of the body, especially in Greek sculpture.''
The figure was painted as though he were splitting off from himself, as in a Picasso cubist portrait or an ancient Cretan sculpture.
He got the idea this summer after taking a shower. ``I was standing there, naked as a jaybird. And I was looking in the mirror at myself, a common fallacy among humans and chimpanzees.''
He was looking into two mirrors hinged together, and was fascinated to maneuver the mirrors to create various effects that merged or split his figure. He ran for his camera and took pictures. Later, he sketched the scene.
Originally, he had three figures, each of them nude. To avoid looking like ``a centipede with multiple penises,'' as he put it, Sibley painted out one figure.
Then his friend, Norfolk artist Edna Sara Lazaron, advised him: ``Charles, if you don't put some clothing on yourself, those penises are all anybody's going to see.''
He took her advice and painted on jockey shorts.
Sibley pegged it a psychological study and a comment on aging. Beyond that, ``it's a portrait of a nasty old man,'' he said, grinning mischievously.
During his legendary tenure at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, where he built an art department from the mid-1950s until his retirement in 1980, Sibley was known as a somewhat acid-tongued professor with high standards and a very critical eye.
Sixteen years since his retirement, once-bitter memories of lazy students and hobbyist housewives seem to have softened. Seated in his comfortable, art- and antiques-filled home in the Simonsdale neighborhood in Portsmouth, where he has lived since retirement, he imagines he should have been more sympathetic to such people.
He winces at things he said.
``I don't think it would have hurt me to have been a little kinder. I really don't.''
He could have just ignored the aggravations and kept his mouth shut. ``That's awfully nicey-nicey. But people remember the cutting things you say. It's easy, if you have that wicked tongue, to let it go. And how I developed that wicked tongue, I don't know.''
He recalled an older, untalented woman who enrolled in his class to be with her friends. One day, she brought him a delicious dish she had cooked. Sibley told her what he truly thought: ``You should stay home and be an artist in the kitchen.''
The comment was recalled to him years later by her relatives as a painful putdown.
``In teaching, I think I stepped out of place quite a few times,'' he said.
During the TCC exhibit, Sibley plans to meet with art students to talk about his work, and theirs. It will be the first time he's experienced such a session in 16 years.
``I'm looking forward to it. I miss them. But not to the extent that I'm going to go seek them out,'' he said, smiling. ``I haven't had the urge to leave my studio. I've been so involved in my work, and in my commissions I take for money-making purposes.''
Sibley clearly differentiates between his personal paintings, and ones he paints for the marketplace.
Generally, his personal work consists of figures, and makes some sort of thoughtful, provocative statement. The decorative work often consists of a handsome landscape.
Because he paints for sale about half the time, Sibley insists he hasn't maintained his integrity as an artist.
``I have painted exactly what I thought would sell in Tidewater, Virginia. And I'd hang them in galleries, give them to decorators. Just products to match color schemes'' for ``people who want a decor that their friends would admire.''
``You can't do much on a teacher's salary. And that's what I had. And I wanted to travel. And I wanted to have a few things in this world. And I knew I could do it by painting this stuff.
``I don't say it's garbage. For the most part, it is pleasant, professional painting. But there's not much of me.''
Earlier in Sibley's career, he exhibited alongside famous artists like Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann and Georgia O'Keeffe. He was invited to show in the Whitney Museum's biennial exhibits, and he was carried by significant New York galleries, including Babcock Gallery.
After Janet Nessler closed her gallery in the early 1970s, Sibley was without a New York gallery.
``I went around. Everybody was polite. Nobody was the least interested.''
The art world had changed, and Sibley's expressive figurative work was no longer the rage. Pop was in. Hard edge. Minimalist. Conceptual art. Installation art.
And none of these approaches intrigued Sibley. Even now, he said, ``I don't see much going on I want to be a part of in New York.''
He holds to values he's honed since his youth, values related to what he calls ``quality'' and ``excellence.''
``Look over your shoulder at the past, and you'll have an easier chance to see what is mediocre and what is excellent. I try to apply some of those modes of evaluation to contemporary work.''
He looks for ``the uniqueness and the personal stamp of someone's mind on the work. To me, that presence is much more important than being necessarily up to date.''
For Sibley, ``what matters is the spirit of the thing, and the uniqueness. One of the highest aims is to create emotion.''
When Sibley is painting, he frequently walks away from his painting, turns his back, and spies it through the looking glass. Then he'll turn the mirror upside down. All toward gaining a refreshed perspective.
In trying to assess his career as a whole, he does the same.
``You can back off and look at the past in true perspective, insofar as you can be honest with yourself. I have no silly, egotistical idea of being an artist of any importance in the record of the future.
``I enjoy painting, and I think I'm a professional artist. And there are few enough professional artists around. But that's about as much as I can say for myself.''
Then he softens. ``I wish that I were maybe a little less realistic about myself. I think it makes you happier.
``And yet, I get so much pleasure in painting. I get on a project, and if it's a genuine opportunity for some expression, I get very enthused and very happy - and it just carries me away.'' ILLUSTRATION: COLOR PHOTOS BY MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/The
Virginian-Pilot
Portsmouth artist Charles Sibley is reflected in the glass
protecting his 1995 painting ``Baldy Perdue'' at the TCC gallery,
where a show of his work is on view through Nov. 8.
At 74, Sibley, shown here a home, has painted for nearly 50 years.
This work, ``Classical Kaposis Sarcoma III,'' and seven others on
exhibit are from Sibley's series on AIDS, painted in 1992 and 1993.
Photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/The Virginian-Pilot
During the TCC exhibit, Charles Sibley plans to meet with art
students to talk about his work, and theirs. It will be the first
time he's experienced such a session in 16 years.
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