Barry Vance (1946- ) “Hevener’s Cemetery” Oil on panel, 10 by 20 inches, 1979 Gift of Mr. & Mrs. Frank Mairs to the Clay Center, 1979

“Our Art” is an occasional feature in the Sunday Gazette-Mail, devoted to artwork found in mjaor collections around the state.

Barry Vance’s paintings invite the viewer to look closely at the minute details - small sheep, electric poles, cemetery headstones - of small-town rural America.

“Barry likes to travel the real West Virginia,” said Denise Deegan, the Clay Center’s associate curator. “He has a sense of place. These are the back-road scenes, things we don’t see anymore because now we go on interstates.”

Born in Baltimore, Vance lived in West Virginia from 1976 to 1988, when he and his wife moved to Winchester, Va. They divide their time between Winchester and a summer place in Pendleton County.

Vance works with a very fine brush, reducing sheep to dots, a process that has intensified as his paintings have gotten ever smaller since he made this 10- by 20-inch piece in 1979, Deegan said. A 2006 show at the Capitol Complex’s Cultural Center consisted entirely of 9- by 7-inch landscapes.

“It takes a very steady hand,” Deegan said. “The thing that is amazing about his paintings is you can’t see brushwork. He completely focuses on the subject matter.”

“It’s from an elevated point of view,” Vance once explained. “I’m not an airplane, but as you travel through these mountains, you can look down on the landscape from any number of vantage points. And that’s how I draw. And that’s what’s always attracted my attention, the forms and shapes of the land.”

Vance typically paints on Masonite, a hard surface, Deegan said. “He can get that look that’s similar to an egg tempera painting. It has that flatness.”

Although Vance earned two degrees in fine art, one from Pratt Institute in New York and the other from Brooklyn College, there is a folk-art feel to Vance’s work.

As he ambles through Pendleton County, he makes notes in his sketchbook, said Callen McJunkin, who represents Vance. “But he really uses those sketches as a starting point, the way an abstract artist does. It’s not as if he takes a photo and reproduces it in his studio. He’s struck by the details and the lay of the land.”

“But he really is a contemporary artist,” McJunkin said. “He is of our time. Sometimes it’s a jet plane or a satellite dish he inserts into the picture.”

The Huntington Museum of Art, the University of Kentucky Art Museum and the West Virginia Division of Culture and History all own at least one Vance.

Three Vance pieces came to Sunrise Museum in 1979 and a Vance triptych, which visitors most often see, came in 1991. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Mairs gave this one. Sunrise Museum was later absorbed into the Clay Center.

- By Bob Schwarz

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