Published: June 29, 2008 11:42 am            

Bell hunts with a brush

Artist of month paints the outdoors

DUNCAN — An avid outdoorsman, J.J. Bell spends a lot of his time huntin’ and fishin.’ Wildlife need have no fear, however, as the artist is only huntin’ the next landscape to paint, and fishin’ for the best angle to set up his easel.

Duncan Art Guild’s artist of the month, Bell does most of his painting outdoors because he enjoys being outside, and he likes the challenge of changing light on his subjects.

“It’s a whole different mindset painting from life and painting from photos. It’s just not as much fun painting from photos,” he said.

The Duncan native has had plenty of opportunities to do both in his life. He remembers being interested in art as early as the fifth grade at Emerson Elementary School.

“I got pretty good at copying and drawing little cartoons and such,” Bell said.

After graduating from Duncan High School, he joined the Army, serving during the Korean War. After his hitch was completed, he headed west to Colorado, where he worked in the molybdenum mines. When he came back to Duncan, he worked at the SunRay refinery until 1967, when he went to Corpus Christi, Texas, to work in another refinery. He retired after 40 years and seven months of refinery work and came back to Duncan in 2003, after the death of his first wife, the former Lois Goodrich of Marlow.

All those years, he was also refining his art.

“I studied with Richard Getz from Oklahoma City, one of the finest artists in the country. For a couple of years, he’d come to town once a week and eight or 10 of us would set up our easels and paint for three hours,” Bell said.

He has also participated in workshops given by Chris Morel, Gay Faulkenberry, Matt Smith, and Ralph O. Berg, among others.

“I also buy a lot of art videos and CDs. I’d about as soon do that as to go to a workshop because you can watch them over and over again,” he said.

Live models are often used in Bell’s paintings, including a portrait of former longtime Duncan resident Gates McPhail. In Corpus Christi, the group with which he painted enjoyed creating portraits of firefighters. Although he draws and works in oils, pastels and charcoal, his favorite medium is oil. Not surprisingly, many of his favorite canvases depict scenes from the Duncan area and from Colorado and New Mexico, where he and his wife, the former Shirley Morgan who grew up in the Ratliff City area and whom he married in 2006, like to spend a lot of time. Bell can find subjects to paint anywhere, as a first-place still life of an old sewing machine shows. Any person, scene or object that catches his artistic eye is fair game for his paintbrush.

“I used to travel with an Airstream trailer, and also had a VW camper, but it turned out to have transmission woes and was more trouble than it was worth. We finally decided that we’d rather say in a hotel and eat the best food we could find than to stay in a trailer!

“I love New Mexico — the Taos and Red River area — and especially like to go in the fall when the aspens are so beautiful. I don’t hunt or fish or hike like many people do. I just paint. Not too many people like to paint outdoors as I do, but there’s nothing like it. You shouldn’t try to paint over an hour and a half or so, as the shadows change. In the late evening or early morning, the sun is a little more stable and you can paint longer,” Bell said. When he’s not traveling, one of his favorite places to set up his easel is on the patio of his Duncan home where a wooded area offers birds and other wildlife as subjects.

Bell has won numerous ribbons for his art, including the Best-in-Show Award at the annual Silver Cup Art Show held by the Art Association in Corpus Christi while he lived there. He is a member of Duncan Art Guild and First Christian Church.

        

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