Anne's Interview in the Ocotober/November
2004 Issue of Blur Magazine
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FEATURE
Going to the Dogs: The Art Of Anne Leuck Feldhaus by Shannon Stairhime
To hear her talk about it, you would almost think that Anne Leuck Feldhaus' venture into painting was an accident. "I started making art to save my soul," Feldhaus says, half sarcastically like it's a joke that's been told too often, but is still poignantly true. It began simply enough. A kind of escape from the corporate job that she was working, Leuck Feldhaus began making small, functional pieces. Painted tiles with magnets attached that she sold to co-workers. And what has blossomed from that is a full time career as a painter, which includes frequent shows in art fairs, commissioned works, public works and a prolific eBay-based web business.
The images I first saw of Feldhaus' were on display at the Soul Café in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood. They were boldly colored paintings and prints, vivid and lively with sensitivity to line and shape that was emphasized by the hard, black lines that rigorously outlined the shapes. And the shapes - well, they were mostly dogs. Smiling, wide-eyed dogs. Feldhaus' paintings, which are done in vivaciously toned acrylics, seem to spring off the walls, something that cannot be entirely attributed to the coat of varnish that Feldhaus lacquers onto the surfaces to, in her words, "...make the colors pop." There is a life, a vivacity in her work that is completely organic.
Early on, Feldhaus had all of the right kinds of encouragement. Nana, Feldhaus' grandmother, actively fostered her granddaughter's love of art, buying her art supplies and allowing Anne and her brother a kind of gallery where she displayed their artwork. There was one charcoal drawing that Feldhaus did of a neighbor's house that her mother took, framed and hung on the wall. "When parents come to me and ask how they can encourage creativity in their children, that's what I tell them to do," Feldhaus says. "Frame something."
Feldhaus attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and though she was taking a lot of art classes, she didn't have the courage to declare art as her major until her brother, who had been an engineering major, did just that. It was one of those, "Well, if he can do it, so can I," kinds of things, according to her - but it worked.
During her years at the University of Wisconsin, Feldhaus studied sculpture, using a lot of foundry equipment and metal works.
During art school, Feldhaus worked up the courage to approach a well-respected teacher of hers to pose the question to him: Did she have what it takes to be an artist? After looking through her portfolio, the man in question replied casually, as if it didn't mean anything at all, "Maybe." "He was such an ass," Feldhaus comments, unable to hide the little edge of bitterness that crept in her voice. But, it was probably the best response he could have given her, or so she reasoned. If he would have said, "Yes. Yes, you have what it takes," It might not have been enough to push her. Instead, he said maybe, and Feldhaus felt she had to prove herself.
A year before she graduated, Feldhaus had accumulated enough credits to graduate, but wasn't willing to give up her art, which was what she though she had to do if she ventured out into the real world. Or teach. "If you're going to do art for a living, you're going to have to teach." It was a professor of hers who had said these rather damning words. Damning if you don't want to be a teacher. When Feldhaus moved to Chicago fourteen years ago, she thought she would be here for only one or two years. She loved the city of Madison, but thought she had to move to Chicago to move forward in her life. Her brother had moved to Seattle, and her plan was to go to Chicago to work for a few years and then move out west.
Her image of Chicago was very glamorous. She had an aunt who lived in the city. What she remembered of her aunt's apartment, according to Feldhaus, was love beads and pillows. The family would have to drive through Chicago on the way to see her grandmother, the same Nana who was so encouraging of her early interest in art, and Feldhaus would anticipate seeing the skyline. She thought living in Chicago would be like downtown. A high rise. All of that glamour. What she got instead was an apartment building on Chicago's north side near Loyola University. Not exactly the idea of city life she was anticipating, but once the glamorous ideal was shaken, Feldhaus found that she loved the El, the energy of the city, "this brand new thing," and so she stayed.
Post-graduated, living in Chicago, not wanting to teach, Feldhaus got herself a corporate job. Something unrelated to art, which, not surprisingly, drove her back to art out of necessity. This is where the "soul-saving" power of art comes in to play.
One of the things Feldhaus had to come to terms with as an artist was the almost stark joviality of her painting. Feldhaus had a "hard time for a long time with the happy stuff," that she was creating. Bright colors. Bold outlines. Smirking dogs. People flying through the air. That resistance to "happy art" was shaken in the most unlikely of ways.
It was the weekend after 9/11 at an art fair Feldhaus didn't even feel like attending. She was too frazzled, just like everyone else at that time, to pull herself away from home. But she went. She noticed something that day. Something about the effect her art was able to produce. When people came to her, and looked at the paintings she had, they smiled. They were happy. "We need happy art," Feldhaus said, touching on the way that art is able to create a certain feeling in its viewers.
Her work as a professional artist has taken Feldhaus in a number of directions. In 2001 it led her to teaching children's art classes in Evanston. It was an anxiety-filled experience, she recounted. Feldhaus commented that because she takes responsibility so seriously, so personally, the idea of being the person solely responsible for "all of those kids" made her extremely nervous. But in this case, as she has often found to be true, the fear worked as a kind of drive, instigating better performance. She also worked on the south side of Chicago at an after school painting class, but in this case she was able to work with another teacher, and the separation of duties made it a more enjoyable experience. In this particular class, about twenty percent of the students had special needs, but the artwork they produced, according to Feldhaus, was fabulous. "the kids were amazing," she said, showing me a small photo album with pictures of her students posed beside their paintings. "Look at that pride," she said.
Feldhaus keeps a daily sketchbook. A book of thumbnail sketches and outlines where she works out the details of her paintings before she takes them to the canvas, where she outlines them first in black (like a brush sketch). Then she fills in the bold colors, sometimes going back over an area several times before she gets the color just right. And then she outlines everything again in black, "coloring book style," she said, with a laugh.
It is her perfectionism, her fear that people aren't going to be happy with the work that, according to her, has really worked to tighten her style. She showed me some of her earlier paintings, where the lines were fuzzier, more fluid, than the stark outlines in her current work. She expressed that she wanted eventually, to get back to that looser style.
A number of her paintings have been made as commissions, most of which are pet portraits. In this case, she takes stories from the dog owners and works out a number of possibilities on the computer, allowing the people that have commissioned her to have as much input on the final product as possible. She really just wants them to be happy with what they end up with.
Feldhaus started doing the "dog stuff" in 2001 when she got her dog, Izzy. It wasn't intentional, but Izzy apparently provided a great deal of inspiration, and Feldhaus found herself suddenly with all of these dog paintings.
Though the most in demand of Feldhaus' paintings are those of her dogs, a lot of her work doesn't have dogs in them at all. She makes bold cityscapes and dream-like paintings of people flying. But about 75 percent of her current output is of dogs. "If you're going to make a living doing what you love there are certain sacrifices," she says of it. The bottom line here is: dog paintings sell, so she makes them. No harm. No foul.
According to Feldhaus, she works fast, and works best under pressure using this duality of procrastination and perfectionism to create her pieces. Her peak hours are between 3 p.m. and 3 a.m. She's a night person, though she claims to be trying to be more of a morning person.
Feldhaus tends to have several things going at once, and works in "batches" doing a number of basely similar paintings at one time. But it is her frugality more than anything that makes this the case. She doesn't like to waste paint, though she claims to be well aware that acrylic paint is not expensive. Not like oil paint. If she has some left when a painting is finished, she will simply start something new, rather than waste it.
