Born to be an Artist

Written By: Luke Osteen | Issue: 2020/03 - March

It’s easy to fall under the spell of Pauline Marr’s paintings of this corner of Western North Carolina. 

They’re pastoral visions culled from backroads wanderings and infused with a nostalgic tug that’s almost palpable. 

This is American Pastoral delivered with an artist’s precision and a poet’s wistfulness. Barns collapse, yet manage to hold onto their dignity earned by decades of service. A row of cabins at Camp Merrie Wood look a bit scuffed, yet their relentlessly cheerful green roofs signal that they’re ready to receive yet another summer’s worth of boisterous girls. An old grey farm horse is cropping a nearly-gone-to-seed pasture, ready to be called back to duty. 

Each painting is a postcard from a South, from a way of life, that’s vanishing before the onslaught of 21st century drive and low-level anxiety. Let them wash over you and you can feel the tensions slipping away. They’re transporting and therapeutic in even measure. 

You’d think that such talent would be some God-given, straight-from-the-womb degree of genius, and you’d be almost correct.

“When I was three or four years old, I recall standing barefoot and tippy-toed, with my nose pressed against the glass pane of our dining window,” Pauline says. “My father was mowing hay in the bottom field with a tractor. I was mesmerized by the graceful way the wheat grass moved in the breeze, creating these amazing criss-cross patterns rippling through this field of green. I remember thinking to myself, ‘I can never forget exactly how that looks so I can paint it.’ I was born an artist, plain and simple and my medium is acrylic, oils or watercolors.”

But that account belies the decades of study and refinement, and, most importantly, the dramatic reformation of her basic talents and vision.

“I woke one morning, about 10 years ago, and when I stepped to the easel, everything had changed – my realism had left sometime during the night and no matter what I did to stop it, I had become an Impressionistic painter.

“I describe my work as Abstract Impressionistic Realism. If you view one of my paintings closely, it’s very abstract. Stepping backwards a few feet and it becomes impressionistic. A few steps more and it’s as realistic as can be.”

To view Pauline’s work, visit Easley an Artist in Highlands, just across from Town Hall. You can also catch the artist and her work at Highlands Farmers Market, Saturdays at Kelsey-Hutchinson Founders Park, from May to October. Finally, you can pin her down at her Beginner and Beyond Acrylic Painting Class at the Sapphire Valley Community Center. 

And, of course, you can contact her through her website, paulines-art.com.

by Luke Osteen