The Performing Arts Studio in Norman presents an exhibition featuring structure-focused paintings by a former New Mexico park ranger, through July 25.
“Forms Large and Small” by Oklahoma native Sue Schofield includes paintings depicting structures as small as a piece of fruit and as large as the ruins of an old New Mexico mission.
Schofield said she was born and raised in Oklahoma, until her family moved to New Mexico when she was 16. She lived there for more than 30 years and spent some of her time living on a ranch and working as a ranger at Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.
DOTTING THE LANDSCAPE
While there, she developed an interest in the structures and architecture of the missions that dotted the landscape. When she moved back to Oklahoma in 1988, she brought her love of mission architecture with her. Using the knowledge cultivated volunteering and working at the monument, she became an educator, including teaching in a temporary position at the University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman.
Schofield is now retired, which has allowed her to focus on painting “? a hobby she didn’t become serious about until after she stopped working. Before that, she said she took art classes at the Norman Firehouse Art Center, but she always considered herself a “Sunday painter.” It wasn’t until after her retirement that she began to realize her potential as an artist.
“And I began to see that if I really applied myself, I could become something more than I ever thought I could be as a painter,” she said.
The free exhibition is on display at the Performing Arts Studio, 200 S. Jones. For more information, call 307-9320.
“?Will Holland
This article appears in Jul 8-14, 2009.