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By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON
Fauquier Democrat Contributlnf Writer t A garret studio. A beret.' A paint « splattered smock and a palette smeared with daubs of oils. A carafe of wine, a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese, the struggling painter’s dinner eaten by flickering candlelight. They’re the romantic symbols of the artist’s life. And nowhere in this tableau is there a place for a squeeze bottle of dish detergent.
“But there’s lots and lots of dishwashing. , .There's dishwashing for everything in life!” contends Phyllis McCreary. “An artist is no exception. You have to clean your brushes, make your own canvas stretchers, make your own frames. I like that aspect - beginning with a raw canvas.”
But she doesn’t like the framing part, at least not when a mid-summer heat wave is turning her studio into a sauna and she’s struggling to ready a score of paintings for the opening this Sunday of her solo show at the Middle Street Gallery in Washington.
She hunts for a screwdriver among the piles of works-in-progress, pieces of metal frames, scraps of paint-smeared rags and boxes of brushes. It looks a mess, she concedes, apologizing for the disarray in the old bam-cum-studio. But it is the kind of mess that marks the work area of a creative person too busy to stop and find a place for everything and then put everything in its place. “I know where everything is,” Mrs. McCreary maintains as she triumphantly holds high the missing screwdriver.
Do most artists paint and frame both?
“Not if they’re rich and famous!” She attacks the metal comers with the screwdriver. “I’d do anything not to do this! I hate it!”
Maybe it’s the dishwashing, or maybe it’s her years in a non-artistic job as an economist with the U.S. Department of Labor, but Phyllis McCreary is not the stereotypical artist. She’s practical. When she talks art, it’s in terms anyone can understand. And when she paints, it’s with a talent that anyone can recognize and appreciate.
Her works fall into four styles, all very different.
The early paintings in acrylics are big, bold abstracts: bold and big in their shapes and bold and big in their colors. She points to a pink and yellow circular design. “That was my first absWkct. It’s in the show for , * historical pu^bsesT”' ShdjoKeC *It’s a
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