VERO BEACH — For 15 years, a dedicated group of Vero Beach’s most accomplished artists has been meeting monthly for coffee, critique and moral support. But it has never quite figured out what to call itself.
Art Alliance, Art Bunch, Creative Union, Mixed Media and other names were all proposed at a recent meeting – and discarded.
So by default, the circle of friends calls itself simply Art Support Group. Its purpose is its members’ continuing development as artists.
Seven members comprise the group: painters Deborah Gooch, Tim Sanchez, Kathy Staiger, Nancy Tuttle and Ann Weibel; photographer and group founder Betsy McKean; and pastels artist Dawn Miller.
McKean says that the Art Support Group is first and foremost about critique.
As applied to the visual arts, the term refers to the evaluation of an artist’s work, with the artist present, by a group of the artist’s peers.
The aim of critique is to identify an artwork’s flaws – or strengths – using a standard of quality that is generally agreed upon by the participants. Many artists first encounter the critique in art school, where the practice is thought to help students gain insight into their work through the disinterested – and often unsympathetic – eyes of their professors and classmates.
“When artists create something, they tend to love it at first and not see any flaws,” McKean says. “It is very helpful to have someone who is not emotionally involved look at the work and make suggestions.”
She quickly adds that the members of the Art Support Group “try to make constructive, not hurtful, remarks” that members can take away with them to improve their work.
Miller says there’s no authoritarian “this is right and this is wrong” attitude in the group’s approach to critique.
Staiger quips, “We just ‘think’ we know what’s right or wrong.”
McKean founded the group based on a similar gathering she organized in her former home of Lexington, Ky.
“When I moved down here, I missed that group terribly,” she says.
McKean’s art credentials are sterling. Her MFA is from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her art career includes a nine-year stint as chairman of the art department at Richard Bland College of the College of William and Mary in Petersburg, Va. Darby Fine Art represents her abstract photography in Vero Beach.
The other members of the Art Support Group are no slouches, either.
Staiger has an M.A. in art and humanities from Hofstra University, Sanchez has an MFA from Long Island University and Gooch studied painting at the Maryland Institute of Art. Weibel is represented in Meghan Candler Gallery on Vero’s island.
Like McKean, Staiger is represented by Darby Fine Art.
The author of the popular how-to book, “The Oil Painting Course You’ve Always Wanted,” Staiger, along with Gooch and Miller, are faculty members at the Vero Beach Museum of Art School.
The impressive assembly convenes every month at a different member’s house. All but one live beachside.
May’s meeting found them at Nancy Tuttle’s place in The Moorings, where each artist brought at least one artwork for critique.
After settling in with steaming cups of coffee and delectable sweets, the members tried to put into words what brought them into the fold.
Staiger was part of a critique group in the Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood area before moving to Vero in 1998. She was considering starting a group here when she learned from Weibel that one was already in place.
“When I joined this group I was really excited about being with people who had other concepts of art than I did,” she says. “That’s what makes this group so much fun, because we come from different media, and different genres of painting.”
The camaraderie of equals was also a draw for Staiger.
“You’re sitting in a studio, day after day, by yourself. Painting is a very solitary pursuit,” Staiger says. “Frequently you don’t see your painting with a fresh eye, because you’ve been working on it for so long.”
Sanchez agrees. Before joining the group, he admits to feeling “isolated” as an artist in Vero Beach.
“I was painting, and lining ’em up and having questions about the work with nobody to speak to. So when I was asked to join this, all of that fell away,” he says.
He praised the group’s members for their “clear vision of how to see things.”
But the group is not entirely about critique, and the answers to some of the issues it tackles are not crystal clear.
“We talk about problems, we talk about galleries, we talk about representation, we talk about all the things that normally concern artists,” says Staiger.
Artists’ problems include self-doubt and artist’s block, says Staiger, to which Gooch adds the eternal questions, “Should you keep doing it?” and “Am I in it for the wrong reasons?’”
When asked how often those topics come up in meetings, a chorus of voices shouts, “Every month!” followed by hearty laughter.
The critique part of the meeting gets under way when Sanchez places two of his recent paintings in front of the group.
One of the canvases is predominately red with a rectangle of pink in the upper left corner. Three apples sketched in gray paint on top of the red ground identify the picture as a still life.
“I just kept eliminating an awful lot until I got to this,” Sanchez says, gesturing to the painting. “If you have some suggestions, I could really take them.”
The group asks Sanchez a few questions about his intent and offers some tentative suggestions. Then Staiger identifies the artist’s dilemma:
“If you increase your texture on the bottom, between those two apples, and then increase the lines on the top, then you are going to have two textural effects stacked one on top of the other. I don’t think that’s what you’re after,” she says with conviction.
Sanchez’s response is one of sudden enlightenment.
“You’re right! You’re absolutely right. That’s just what I’m up against,” he says.
No matter how well-intentioned, critique is not for everyone. But then not just anyone can join the Art Support Group. Membership is a matter of invitation, and standing members must unanimously approve a candidate’s admission.
“Showing your art is such a personal thing. We look for people who we feel have knowledge to help us grow.” says McKean.
Says Staiger: “They’ve got to be able to contribute to the critiques; they’ve got to be knowledgeable enough about composition and color. They have to be congenial.”
They must also have the confidence that comes with proficiency in their chosen art form.
“We don’t want to have to teach,” says Sanchez, who explains that even though the collection of artists that make up the group do different types of work and express different opinions about art, they speak a common idiom.
“It’s like another language,” he says. “It’s our own language.”
