Clovis Heimsath Retrospective at the Red & White Opening December 10

The Red & White Gallery in Fayetteville is exhibiting a retrospective on the work of Clovis Heimsath (1930-2021) to open this Friday, Dec. 10, from 4-7 p.m. Clovis is known throughout the state as a leader in architecture and historic preservation, but locally is more recognized as a civic leader and as a painter. It is his long career as a painter that the town will be celebrating with the exhibit “Clovis Heimsath: A Retrospective” that will be open thru Jan. 15, 2022.

Artists are often advised to paint what they know, and what Clovis knew very well were the people, the scenes, and the architecture of the area.

Clovis Heimsath, FAIA

Clovis was first and foremost an architect, and that skill is evident in many of his paintings. He studied at Yale University and in Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship, and his love for simple buildings led him to write “Geometry in Architecture: Texas Buildings Yesterday and Today” which UT Press published in 2002. He painted barns, the buildings of Fayetteville and was commissioned to paint local homes as well.

In 1974, Clovis and his wife, Maryann, moved with their family to their farm near Fayetteville and moved his architectural firm into the historic Zapp Building on the square. (They would eventually move their business to Austin and convert the building into the Country Place Hotel which later became the Grand Fayette Hotel.)

Clovis made many photos and hundreds of sketches of what he saw around him. He enjoyed small-town life and his painting subjects became the people and events around Fayetteville: Lickskillet Days, area farmers and their tractors and livestock, towns folk, visiting cyclists, church events, county fairs, or just the other fellows around the coffee club table at Orsak’s. Back on his farm, Clovis loved to sit in his studio in the barn and paint the people and places of Fayetteville that he had photographed, often making various paintings from a single photo. Some were small, intimate images, while others were of soaring proportions.

When it came to painting, Clovis was self-taught. His early works have a simple, almost primitive feel to them. Large (4x4 ft. canvases) with a single person dominating the frame. And with simple, muted tones. The images become powerful statements that pull the viewer into the work.

Simple watercolor gifts

One story about Clovis sums up his love of painting and his love of interacting with people.

“We had a neighbor, Guadalupe or “Lupe”, of whom Clovis painted a portrait,” Maryann tells the story. “We found out she had entered a nursing home, so we went to see her. We brought chocolate for her, and gave some to others as well, but were told by the administrator that bring such treats wasn’t a good idea as it could cause choking. Well, Clovis wanted to take something on our visits. The administrator suggested, ‘I know that you are a painter. Maybe you could do a picture or something like that.’

Soon after that we were sitting in the kitchen at the farm where there were birds at a birdfeeder hanging out the window and I said to Clovis, “you could paint that.” Well, he did! We made copies of it and took them to the nursing home.

That was in 2011 and it was the start of Clovis painting a small (4x5) watercolor of a bird or animal each week. I would make 100 copies and we would visit two nursing homes in La Grange and two in Columbus. Over the years Clovis created over 600 of the little watercolors, which he kept in a series of photo books.

But the best part of the story may be that after Clovis died I decided we really had to go back to bringing these things to the nursing homes because the residents were waiting every Friday to see them, and we hadn’t been there since Covid started. So, I went back into the books and started with the first one and printed it out to take. At one of the nursing homes I met a lady working there and told her I was going back to bringing the watercolors every week and had started copying them again from the first one. She saw the print and said, ‘Oh yes, I remember this drawing. I have one. I had suggested painting to Clovis because I knew he was a painter, and I knew about ARTS and Fayetteville and that’s why I suggested maybe he could do something. And he came back the next week to give out the pieces and I still have mine!’”

Years later the work of Clovis is still making an impression on people. That initial watercolor and the more than 600 that followed make one of the displays at the gallery showing.

Clovis Heimsath: A Retrospective

Opening Dec. 10, 4-7 p.m. Red & White Gallery

Exhibit Dec. 10, 2021 thru Jan. 25, 2022.