Lee Baldwin visits Nancy Bautzmann

A Loving Touch to Realism

By Lee Baldwin, May, 2005

What may first strike you about a Nancy Bautzmann canvas is the stillness.

Her subjects are poised at a moment of quiet perfection, with an illusion of such space and solidity that can make you want to reach inside.

Then you may become aware of Bautzmann's precision, each canvas crisp and flat with no build-up of paint, each form sharp-edged and exact, yet with the subtle shading and color variation that communicates life.

If you look at this art with the rational and objective part of your brain, it will say to you, "That is a flower," and be ready to move on to something else. If the intuitive and subjective part of your brain is engaged, you'll experience sensations of quietness, peace, and an enormous depth contained in the image.

Bautzmann's painting can be classed as realism or extreme realism. Her technical approach follows that of the old masters, where a transparent underpainting and color study is worked over with more opaque paints.

When we asked Nancy Bautzmann how she approaches a painting, she had one word: contrast. She uses bright foreground shapes in contrast over dark backgrounds. Bautzmann also contrasts warm colors over cool ones, and sets off foreground objects with sharp, clear edges against background forms having blurred, fuzzy outlines. These three types of contrast, along with application of atmospheric and linear perspective, allow the backgrounds to recede while propelling the key objects forward.

But one need not be aware of her technique, for in many ways, neither is she. The images simply work, allowing intuitive contemplation of the captured moment. Her subject matter is simple, taken from her life and surroundings: cactus flowers, a silver tea service, a slice of chocolate cake.

After a college course in figure drawing suggested by her mom, Bautzmann, besides finding she had talent, caught the bug. Later while working as a graphic designer she developed her art studying under several painters, the one she mentions today is Gunter Korus (American, 20th c.). A Web search for Korus turns up online portfolios from a dozen of his students, including Bautzmann, all of whom are successful and prolific artists. Korus himself is known for extreme realism, his classic "old world" still lifes demonstrate an advanced ability to capture surface textures and complex form.

When asked what artists might be her peers or influences, Bautzmann replied that besides her key teachers, Hans Axel Walleen, Gloria Malcolm Arnold, and Korus, she doesn't give the topic much thought. Neither does she pay attention to what people say about her work, an attribute that kept her going in earlier days when others might have given up the hunt. She is aloof from the art world socially but living in a world of art privately, a world that is all her own. Her Tucson studio is a perfect complement to this, hidden from neighboring homes in a roof-high sea of prickly pear cactus.

Bautzmann does not proclaim a vision, a philosophy, or an artistic thesis. Asked to elaborate any message she's sending via her art, she said, "I work on things that make me happy," which was her sole left-brain communication. The question was a puzzler for Bautzmann, as she really does not approach her art on that basis. For her it's an analytical question in a subjective world, and Bautzmann clearly works from the feeling, intuitive side of her brain.

Both a watercolorist and an oil painter, Bautzmann prefers to paint landscapes in watercolor, flowers and still life in oils. "Watercolor keeps me loose," she remarked. "If I painted a landscape in oil the details would take me forever."

A studio painter, Bautzmann works from photographs, knowing she has to "push" the reality to get the effect she is after. Often the background of a photo subject won't work at all, until she re-creates that to suit the foreground objects, then begins emphasizing the figure-ground relationships, honing the drawing and composition until everything makes sense. Bautzmann is very big on drawing, spends a lot of time at the drawing and composition stage before beginning with the paint. She feels that anyone who can make a good drawing can make a good painting.

The Old Masters-style approach of composition, transparent paints, and detailed color studies hold her in good stead. Bautzmann is careful not to paint whites on top of other colors, as such whites will be strong in 500 years, whereas whites painted over darks will discolor long before that time.

Besides shadow cast and perspective, another indicator of three-dimensional space is reflection of one object in the surface of another. And reflection is something Bautzmann handles well, likely driving her penchant for polished silver surfaces in her still life renderings. Although her main thrust is realism, she enjoys the abstract images where the scene is stretched and distorted in the reflection on a silver teapot.

Beside Bautzmann's signature you'll see CA OPA, references to two of her key credentials. CA signifies a Copley Artist, one of the two oldest art guilds in America and named for John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), a realist painter thought by some to be America's first great portrait artist. OPA stands for Oil Painters of America, a national organization of realistic painters of which Bautzmann is a signature member.

So, is this a skill or is it an art? Is this the work of yet another realist technician or does it have heart? You should take the time to form your own opinion. This observer answers that Bautzmann's work pushes beyond mere technique, for she has internalized her technique to the point she chooses not to dwell on it. Her art truly brings a loving touch to realism.

Nancy Bautzmann's canvases can be seen at:

Artistic Images of Prescott Gallery
123 South Cortez St., Prescott, AZ
928 778 5155

El Presidio Gallery
3001 E. Skyline Drive, Tucson, AZ
520 299 1414

And on Nancy Bautzmann's website.