Canton Museum of Art’s newest exhibit, 60 Proof: Six Decades of the Whiskey Painters of America has a tipsy twist. Open now through March 7, it features 150 paintings by artists in the Whiskey Painters of America, a group which specializes in miniature watercolor works. In the 1960s, Akron artist Joe Ferriot delighted fellow bar patrons as he painted on pocket-sized canvases, using his glass of booze instead of water. The group of artists took off from there creating untitled, one-off works. “Unwritten rules are that you have to paint on watercolor by candlelight after 10 p.m., no larger than 4-by-5 inch [canvases], dipping your brush in some form of alcohol,” says Canton Museum of Art curator Christy Davis. Davis highlights three of them to see at the exhibit.
Yuki Hall, 2018
Dark, towering buildings meet pastel skies in a war of light and color in a cityscape that’s a hallmark of Hall’s work. Near the bottom of the painting, a pop of orange draws your eye towards a person walking towards the foreground of the piece, otherwise indistinguishable in a plain black suit. “It’s a stark contrast against the stone and brick-and-mortar of the buildings around them,” Davis says. If you squint, streetlamps, car taillights and even tracks in the dirt become visible. “It’s amazing at that scale, the amount of detail some of these artists were able to capture,” Davis says.
Terry Milk, 2013
While many WPA paintings are landscapes, braided garlic bulbs are front and center in this piece. Summery green stalks draw the eye down into the piece, where a russet red background sets the stage for clean, bright heads of garlic. “Terry’s is a zoned-in focus on a single item,” Davis says. Milk currently owns a whiskey distillery in the Catskills where she displays and sells her whiskey paintings. “It’s less about what you’re painting, and more that you are painting and the process of how you’re painting it,” Davis says. “You’re supposed to promote the fine art of painting a miniature, promote fellowship with other artists, just kind of having fun with it.”
John Jude Palencar, 1981
This charming portrait of a bearded man in a floppy hat has a decidedly pastoral air. Neutral browns, black and cream tones grace the miniature canvas, and surprisingly detailed brush strokes make up the anonymous subject’s wistful gaze. Palencar is no stranger to the Canton Museum of Art, and his distinctive style adorned the museum’s walls in a solo exhibition, Between Worlds, in May 2019. “[John’s] best known for his cover work on Game of Thrones, and some other science fiction and fantasy work,” Davis says.
