Whipple Art

Artist Charles Whipple is learning to alter the dimensions. "My paintings are all exercises in making two-dimensional surfaces look three-dimensional," he said. "I saw a Da Vinci once that looked so three-dimensional you wanted to look at it from the side to be sure."

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Whipple has been building a body of work over the past three years and he's mounting his first show in Juneau this week. "Whipple Art" opens Friday, Sept. 6, at the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council gallery.

A self-taught artist, Whipple, 49, has been painting for nine years. He's been in Southeast for 30 years and lived in Pelican, Ketchikan and Sitka as well as Juneau. He's always worked on the water, he said, and now serves on the ferry Kennicott for the Alaska Marine Highway. He works two weeks on, two weeks off, and when he's on land he's painting.

"I'll paint eight to 12 hours straight. I'll forget to blink," he said. "I feel very fortunate that I finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up."

Last year was a very productive year. He averaged a painting a month, although several paintings were later stolen from his house, he said. He's getting faster, too, as his skills develop. He pointed out two comparable life-size portraits of women, done back to back last year. One took 120 hours, the next one 50 hours.

"I learn something with every painting I do," he said.

His paintings are large, about 3-by-4-feet, and many are portraits of women. His quest for depth is made more difficult by the relatively light skin tones of his subject matter. High contrast is a good way to create the impression of dimensionality on a flat surface, he said, but it lacks subtlety. Caucasian flesh tones are essentially white on white, and Whipple is working with subtle shading, building up multiple layers of almost transparent paint.

He works mostly from photographs. He painted a portrait once on commission but it was a little too realistic for his patron.

"He looked at it and said, 'I never could trim my mustache right. Can you fix it?' One side was pointed and the other had a notch out of it," Whipple said. "What you consider to be your flaws, others consider your character. If I eliminate your flaws I'll eliminate your character."

Whipple also likes to focus in on elements and isolate them. One portrait frames a woman's eye, another tightly crops in on her face and hair.

"I paint without compromise," he said. "I don't paint for a market. I'm convinced that if I'm going to grow as an artist I have to paint what I feel like at the moment. If I painted what you wanted, it would short-circuit the creative process."

One exception to this was a commission he received from a co-worker for a painting for his family's new house. He showed Whipple the space where the painting was to go and turned him loose.

"I wanted to paint something personal that they would never consider selling," he said.

He created a nighttime landscape, a triptych with the sun, a crescent moon and three stars over mountains. He pointed out almost invisible colors in the shadows.

"Your eye processes them out, but they're there to balance the colors," he said.

His explanation of the painting was like a tarot card reading that involved the whole family.

"She's a powerhouse, so she's the sun," he said. "He's the moon - he works on a lunar schedule and he's got a kind of edge. The three stars are their three grown children and the mountains represent everything they've built."

Riley Woodford can be reached at rileyw@juneauempire.com.

"Whipple Art"

Opening reception

What: Recent oil paintings by Charles Whipple.

When: 4:30-6:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 6.

Where: Juneau Arts and Humanities Council gallery, 206 North Franklin St.

How long: Exhibit runs through September.