Summer 2008
Artisans: Living off the land
Rett Sturman's art depends on farmers
By Mark Bushnell
Photographed by Orah Moore
Conditions are ideal this morning. A few small clouds scud across the crisp blue sky. The sun feels strong, but not overbearing. Rett Sturman stands behind his easel in the middle of a pasture, staring intently across the dirt road at the barns and silo on the other side. He takes his eyes off the farm only long enough to dab a bit more paint onto his canvas, where, stroke by stroke, the buildings emerge.
As Sturman paints, Darlene Martin escorts a wayward calf back to the rest of the herd. Martin farms this corner of Middlesex with her husband, Steve, and her uncle, Robert Persons. Martin pauses to look at the work in progress. Glancing from the painting to the aging barns, she asks, "Can you straighten that roof up for me?
Sturman smiles. "OK, I'll make it straight as can be, he says.
True to his word, when it comes time to paint the roof, he traces a fairly straight line with his brush. He is less concerned with the fussy, minute details of a scene than with its essence.
"I try to get what it feels like, he says. "I don't care if a painting looks like what it is of, I care if it feels like it. Usually it will look like it if it feels like it.
Sturman's insightful depictions of the agricultural countryside have earned him a strong and growing reputation.
"Rett Sturman has a perception of the Vermont landscape unlike any contemporary artist, says Grier Clarke, whose Clarke Galleries in Stowe represents Sturman. "His paintings are about place and the human element, in particular the agrarian lifestyle of many Vermonters. Painting a farm is no original concept; it is how he interprets it that is original. He likes the forms, the color and the way these forms set in a landscape.
As a young artist in the early '70s, Sturman had a harder time convincing gallery owners to take him seriously. He had planned to be an architect, but partway through a graduate program at the University of Pennsylvania, he decided he needed to paint.
"I didn't want to be 70 and wish I'd done something else, he says. While still wrapping up his degree, Sturman drove a station wagon full of paintings on a pilgrimage to Maine to visit the late Neil Welliver, his former teacher and an acclaimed landscape painter. Welliver was unsparing in his critiques, but he took care to point out things Sturman had done well. The encouragement kept Sturman going. "Finally, one day he said he couldn't tell me any more. Maybe he was just sick of me, says Sturman, with his characteristic self-deprecation.
Welliver was known for painting scenes that showed no signs of being touched by humans. Sturman does the opposite. He's interested in documenting the interaction of people and nature.
"Vermont is so beautiful because of how the villages are, and because farming is still here, he says. "We haven't ruined it yet like so many other places.
Sturman admires the hard work Vermont farmers do, and the vital role they play in keeping the land open. He is friends with many farmers, and a regular visitor to their barns and pastures.
Farms appear regularly in his paintings because he loves the shapes of the buildings and the way light plays off them. He loves their scale and proportions. "There is a humility about them, he says.
He also loves what they represent.
Sturman is indebted to Vermont farmers, and not just for providing subject material. Early in his career, when he kept painting against all economic common sense, farmers made sure the term "starving artist didn't become literal.
"Many times I had $9 in the bank and had no idea where money was going to come from, Sturman says. A nearby farm family, the Lepines, kept an eye out for him. " ‘You look pretty skinny today,' he recalls Jeanette and her sister Gert saying, "and they would say ‘Come on up and have some food.' Once there, Imelda, their mother, would make sure Sturman's plate was piled high.
Sometimes the food was even delivered. Sturman would occasionally find loaves of bread, still warm, in his mailbox. Though the loaves didn't come with a note, he knew they came from his neighbor, Jeanette and Gert's sister, Therese. "I began to think that mailboxes were made that shape for that reason, he jokes.
He and his wife, Cathy Nimick, an art teacher at Stowe High School, also owe their home in Morristown to farmers. When they were looking for salvaged lumber to build their home, Rett and Cathy met Ld Bliss of Elmore, who allowed them to tear down the old, unused farmhouse that had belonged to his parents. Bliss charged them nothing for the materials — even loaned them his big truck to haul the lumber across the valley.
Farmers have offered the painter friendship, shared with him an appreciation of bird songs and sunsets, and even given tips on how to avoid being charged by bulls, an occupational hazard for Sturman.
Vermont wouldn't be the same without farming, and Sturman is doing what he can to ensure that agriculture here has a long life, at least on his canvases.
"I'm after that thing that photographs can't do. They stop life. I want to go further, he says. "I want to put life up there on the wall, but I want it to keep breathing.
An eye for color
Many of Rett Sturman's paintings show farm buildings in spectacular settings. He doesn't invent the locations, but in his hands the scenes become hyper-real, as if you are seeing life more vibrantly, with keener observation than normal.
Years ago, Sturman noticed that his two eyes see things differently. His left eye sees a starker, more contrasted view. His right eye sees a more radiant world with warmer colors. "I want to paint like my right eye sees things, he says.
Move close to a Sturman painting and you will often see a thin orange line separating a brightly lit area from a darker one. "I had seen that on other people's paintings before and I didn't understand it, he says. But he started paying attention to the way things looked the instant he saw them, before the analytical part of his brain kicked in. And, suddenly, he started noticing that orange line dividing dark and light. "Most people think I'm nuts, he says. "But they become interested when it is on a painting and it really makes the painting bounce.