CREEDE—Renowned San Luis Valley painter and sculptor Charles Ewing will be the featured artist in this year’s 29th Annual Taste of Creede Festival May 27-28 of Memorial Day weekend. A versatile creator in both subject matter and media, Ewing has become widely known over the last 50 years for his oil paintings, bronze sculptures, and unique ink-on-clay pieces rendered on his patented Claybord surface. His focus has included wildlife, figurative work, character portraits, liturgical subjects, and plein air landscapes.
Art became a serious endeavor for Ewing during his time in the Peace Corps in Chile. He entered the Peace Corps in 1969 with a B.S. in wood technology and worked with the University of Chile’s Forestry program until the school closed due to political unrest during the presidency of Salvador Allende.
Fortunately, Ewing had been taking night classes in drawing and painting, an interest he developed as a child watching his father, Frank, at the easel. With his newfound facility for realistic rendering, he landed a job as a wildlife illustrator with a group of Peace Corps biologists who were working on the first definitive field guide of Chilean mammals.
After spending two years exploring the Andean Cordillera in search of indigenous wildlife to document with pen and ink and oils, Ewing traveled to Seattle to work as a staff illustrator with the Department of Wildlife at the University of Washington. For this work he began exploring the potential of the scratchboard art medium.
In 1975, he returned to his home state of New Mexico where he opened the Ewing Fine Art Gallery in Cimarron. It was during this time that he began experimenting with various recipes for making his own more permanent and versatile clay-surfaced panels for fine art application. The Cimarron gallery was short lived, however, burning to the ground a year later.
This event led Charles to move to an isolated mountain cabin in southern Colorado, where he spent a snowbound winter in virtual solitude. This immersion in the mountain wilderness was a powerful experience that instilled in him a profound respect for the fundamental integrity of nature – a theme that would pervade his work from that point forward.
In 1992, Ewing decided to manufacture and market his unique clay art surface, which he named “Real Neat Stuff.” Ampersand Art Supply Company was soon created to manufacture and distribute a line of fine art panels that he developed, beginning with his first invention, which was renamed Claybord. His book, The New Scratchboard: Clay Surface Techniques and Materials for Today’s Artist, was published by Watson Guptill in 2001.
Works of art still flow from his studio near Antonito, and Ewing remains busy with his galleries and a steady stream of commissions. He is currently working on an 8’x16’ mural in honor of Mark Jones for the historic Windsor Hotel in downtown Del Norte.
Now, at age 70, his thoughts increasingly turn to the nature of creativity itself as it manifests in all aspects of life, from subatomic particles and galaxies, to music and cooking, to painting and poetry. He is fascinated by the unifying force of creativity in the natural world, and by the ability of creative acts to produce a resonance that is greater than the sum of their parts.
When not in his studio, Ewing enjoys exploring the visual and cultural diversity of the area with his girlfriend, LeeAnn, sharing the wisdom and humor of their many animals and, as often as possible, riding bareback through the sublime landscapes of the San Luis Valley.
The 2017 Taste of Creede is a weekend devoted to the arts and food. The downtown area will be blocked off and artists will be painting, sculpting and potting to live music on the street. At 2:30 p.m. on Saturday there will be a Silver Chef Competition involving local chefs cooking on main street with judging and food tasting to follow. At 4 p.m. Ewing will have an opening of a few selected works followed by the opening of the 14th annual National Small Print Exhibition at the Creede Repertory Theatre. Sunday will culminate the event with a “Quick Draw” competition on Main Street. Artists will work beginning at 1 p.m. under a main tent. The created art will be auctioned off at 2:30 p.m.
Everyone is invited to celebrate Taste of Creede weekend. For more information contact the Creede Chamber at 719-658-2374 or [email protected]