CHARLES STUART CALLIS works in an historic building in a small, Wild West town. The ceiling has been stripped away and the rafters are visible, the walls are bare brick and the floor is unpolished hardwood, marked up from a century of use. The studio tells more of a story now that it can show its structural past, than it would if its surfaces were neatly covered in drywall and paint. It is finished but unfinished, and this is the spirit of Charles’ work.
Many of his landscape paintings are drawn from photographs taken by his grandfather, Keith Hayes, which depict American life in the 1930s-50s. The personality of this patient, soft-spoken and hardworking grandfather comes through Charles’ contemplative interpretations of the landscape in which Hayes lived and worked. But rather than make representational paintings, Charles’ work is
