A life on canvas
A visit with the granddad of community art

Stanton Englehart relaxes in his studio in west Durango early this week. Englehart is the subject of a new, half-hour documentary, ?A Life on Canvas.?/Photo by Todd Newcomer.

by Jules Masterjohn

The local gallery owner that represents his paintings calls him an ?artist?s artist;? a local writer refers to him as a ?man of ideas;? students he taught credit him with opening up their hearts; a fellow artist says that he ?taps into the artist in each person.? Humbly, he says that he is a ?good servant to the cosmos.? The individual that is portrayed through these voices is artist Stanton Englehart. The granddad of the Durango art community and respected elder artist throughout the region, Englehart is the subject of a half-hour film, ?,? which documents his passions: painting, fishing, and sharing with the community.

Englehart received a formal education in art and art history, which enabled him to establish a formal art department at Fort Lewis College in 1961. More significantly, through his inquisitive nature, he educated himself by avidly examining and exploring the visual, intellectual and emotional worlds that have surrounded him. On his own initiative and before he was 20 years old, Englehart read Leonardo da Vinci?s ?Treatise on Painting,? which introduced him to many of the Old World techniques, canons and artistic considerations.

Englehart could be considered a modern day renaissance man, for his curiosities about nature and the human experience have led him to investigate many disciplines. He is known as a man of knowledge who shares the breadth and depth of his learning. His compassionate and loving attitude has developed in him a respect for all things. His astute attention to the structure of the land, its scape and scope, offers him a foundation, a ?subject matter? that has provided half a century of imagery for his paintings.

The landscape, as a subject of painting, was out of fashion in the late 1950s when Englehart was earning his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Colorado in Boulder. While studying, his professors tried to sway him from this subject, to no avail. He recalled, ?After about four or five semesters of me painting only landscapes, and getting pretty good at it while I was still at CU, they kind of capitulated, and in no time at all there where little groups of landscape painters popping up. And then Richard Diebenkorn came along and, in one summer, turned landscape into an honorable subject matter.?

Though he paints pictures of landscapes, the actual lay of the land is only part of what interests Englehart ? his paintings also express his inner territory. For him, painting is an activity that records his layers of experience: what he sees, feels, knows and is inspired by. It is as if he, the painter, is a simple recording device that influences how the record comes out. ?To me, it?s not so much a matter of painting it but recording it. A lot of people think that my subject matter is a cop out. To me, that?s not it at all. It?s just what it is.?

Englehart displays the tools of the trade, two tubes of oil paint, inside his Durango studio Monday afternoon./Photo by Todd Newcomer.

Creating a portrait of a man of such expansiveness, a teacher of deep wisdom and an artist of such a prolific nature (he has produced more than 5,000 works of art) was a consuming task for film producer/director Rich Fletcher, owner of Group Four Teleproductions. Fletcher accompanied the artist to the locations that have informed Englehart?s painting and have grounded his sense of self to place. From the spacious fields surrounding the homestead of Englehart?s family and his birthplace near Lewis, Colo., to the rippling bends of the Animas River in Durango, Fletcher has caught the artist in his most essential elements. During the 14 months of filming and editing, Fletcher was rewarded with getting to know ?two most amazing people,? Stanton and his wife, Pat Englehart. They shared with him their stories, family histories and, of course, many paintings, all which enabled Fletcher to begin to ?see the world through Englehart?s eyes.? The greatest challenge for Fletcher was creating a retrospective about someone as humble as Englehart. ?This film is a thank you for all the wonderful painting, art and teaching he has poured into the community in a broad sense; the lives Stanton has touched go all over the country.? From this empathetic perspective, Fletcher crafted an intimate portrait of the artist, the teacher and the man as seen through the eyes of those who know him and through Englehart, himself.

My life has been one of the fortunate many to be enriched by knowing Stanton and Pat. We sat together a few months ago and talked about the film, which was then recently completed. Stanton offered, ?It was a really beautiful experience. The sound track is so gorgeous, having three or four first-rate artists who are looking at the paintings and putting music to them. That was so delightful to watch that process.? As is true to Stanton?s demeanor, he shared that which was positive. Yet I knew that at times, the scrutiny presented in the documentary process had been challenging for them. Pat summed it up in a most metaphorical way: ?When you ask Stanton why he does what he does or how he does something, it?s as if you are asking someone to walk across the room and then tell you exactly what muscles are being used to walk.?

Such perceptive and poetically presented observations are something I have come to expect from Pat ? and really enjoy. This ability is why Stanton credits Pat with having some of the most profound insights into his work, having watched his art develop for more than 50 years. The intuitive understanding of her husband and his ?interior? landscape painting is touching and powerful. In the film Pat states simply, ?Painting is like breathing for him ? it is just what he does.?

The film, ?A Life on Canvas,? will premiere Wed., Sept. 28, at 7 p.m. at the Durango Arts Center. It is free and open to the public. DVD or VHS copies will be available for purchase. For more information call 259-2606.