Arthur Blanchard: David Leeson

Arthur Blanchard: David Leeson

Arthur Blanchard, 87, is an artist who has lived in East Dallas — in the same house, no less — for almost 50 years. He and his wife, Louise, moved to Dallas in the mid-’60s for his flourishing law career, and everywhere he went, he sketched people — in the courtroom, at church, at the doctor’s office. He also began riding the bus lines, and sketching fellow bus riders became a favorite pastime. Once he retired in 1984, Blanchard began seriously pursuing his art. He set up in a studio near Fair Park and even took a handful of art classes at Southern Methodist University and El Centro. His work has gone largely unnoticed in Dallas, but recently he met Bob Schutze, the owner of Beaux Arts Framing studio in the Design District. Schutze was impressed with Blanchard’s work, particularly because it’s not “hyper-realistic.” Blanchard’s work is on display in Schutze’s gallery, where it’ll stay until around mid-January, Schutze says. The display features a wide variety of Blanchard’s work, including a sampling of his “bus people” sketches.

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Why do you draw and paint primarily people?
Who knows? That’s almost like me saying, ‘Why do you speak?’ It’s what I do. I’ve always done it, for as long as I can remember. It’s just what I’ve always done. I couldn’t even say I’ve always wanted to do it; I’ve just always done it.

When did you begin the “Bus People” series?
When we moved to Dallas, I really didn’t want to drive the commute. I didn’t like driving in the city, so I took the bus by choice, and fortunately my practice did not require me to use a car very much. I don’t know when I began drawing the people on the bus — fairly early on, but I didn’t save stuff. I’d just do little squiggles, and heaven knows how much of it I’ve thrown away, because I never really took any of it seriously until after I retired.

I have these little sketchbooks, and I would draw people on the bus. I have books and books and books. It’s not just bus people; they’re all kinds of people, but I have hundreds of drawings of bus people in these sketchbooks. I’d make drawings, make notations as to the colors, and then I’d go back later and paint it in. None of them are very big.

“They’re like compositions, really, rather than portraits. You’ll see a lady carrying a baby, or a woman with her groceries on the seat beside her, and you have a group of shapes, and it’s a totally different kettle of fish. It’s almost like a still life.”

So they are almost like little snapshots of people?
Yeah, a little bit. The buses are not an ideal place to draw because people are getting on and getting off. You spot someone you want to draw, and poof — they’re gone. So you have to be adaptable and quick.

Who do you draw?
Sometimes there’s somebody who catches my eye, but generally it’s a simple availability of who’s around me. If I had my druthers, I’d rather paint someone who is overtly interesting or has something interesting about them. If I’ve been particularly caught by the face, I might weigh heavily on that. I like interesting-looking faces, but often there aren’t people with interesting faces around. A lot of them, you don’t see any face at all. You just see the form. They’re like compositions, really, rather than portraits. You’ll see a lady carrying a baby, or a woman with her groceries on the seat beside her, and you have a group of shapes, and it’s a totally different kettle of fish. It’s almost like a still life.

Your drawings have a lot of personality. Do you find that you have to make assumptions about people in order to make them that way?
I view each drawing as a sort of challenge. Not only is it a challenge to get a decent likeness, but it’s a challenge to get a decent picture out of it, because there are certain principles of composition, so that takes over pretty early on. But people are mysterious, because we know that our judgments about people are often flawed. We still make them. We make assumptions about people, and I think you can’t help doing that, but I don’t think it’s so much about the inner psychology. That’s a feature, but it comes from the process of drawing itself. You see these people, and you look at them more intently than you would ordinarily look at someone in passing, and I think it’s almost impossible to sit and look at somebody for a while and not begin to make some assumptions about that person.

At the gallery, Bob Schutze says he thinks you are — figuratively speaking —“colorblind” because you paint people of every social class, shape, color and size.

Everybody is grist for the mill. If you’re terribly sensitive and you’re looking for grounds for taking offense, I’m sure you could find plenty of it in my sketchbooks. But it’s really just about amusing subject matter, as far as I’m concerned.

The paintings at the gallery called “Moving Africa,” those are very moving pieces. When did you do those?
I did those from newspaper clippings. Over and over in the newspaper, I saw news clippings of these poor African people, parades of them. I became interested in Africa because of an old World War II buddy of mine. His stories sort of provoked my interest in what was happening there, and these scenes are so tragic — these pitiful people, carrying their mattresses and their cans of water, or whatever they have, with them. In all of them, you have these people on the move; that’s the unifying thought throughout the whole series. So that’s the genesis of it.

Schutze also mentioned you originally didn’t want to label your paintings when you first brought them to him. Why is that?
Well, I still feel that way. Anytime you start naming this stuff, you’re dictating to the viewer what he or she has to think about it. You have the artists, and you have the viewers, and they’re participants in the whole business when they view the art. If somebody wants to come along and see whatever they want to see, why should I tell them what they’ve got to see?

Art by Arthur Blanchard: David Leeson

Art by Arthur Blanchard: David Leeson

IF YOU GO: Arthur Blanchard’s work is on display at Beaux Arts Framing in the Design District.