For the first time, Oil Painters of America’s national exhibition will be in Wichita

For Colorado artist David Harms, being a part of this year’s Oil Painters of America’s national exhibition — one of the most distinguished art exhibitions in the country — goes beyond prestige.

It’s a chance to pay homage to his roots.

“Gosh, my wife and I are going through a lot of stuff, and I just came by some of the art I did in junior high school,” said the 63-year-old Harms, who took art classes at Jardine Middle School and later East High. “Everything I am today — a musician, actor, artist — everything began when I was growing up in Wichita.

“When I first got the notice to apply for the 2024 Oil Painters of America’s national show and saw the location was going to be at Mark Arts in Wichita, Kansas, I really wanted to get into that show. To have it in my hometown, where there are still lots of connections and memories of being a Wichita kid, it just means a lot to me.”

With a 10% acceptance rate, the competition to get into OPA’s national exhibition is fierce.

Harms is among the more than 220 artists who have the distinction of being in this year’s national exhibition, which opens Friday, April 5, with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. at Mark Arts, 1307 N. Rock Road. The exhibition will run through May 31. Admission to the reception and Mark Arts’ galleries is free.

Many of the artists whose works are in the exhibition will be on hand for the reception since OPA’s national conference is also being held at Mark Arts on April 2-7.

Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Chicago, OPA has a membership of more than 3,500 artists.

This is the first time OPA’s national conference and exhibition is being held in Kansas, according to Jaime Dupy, Mark Arts’ development and marketing director. In 2021, Mark Arts hosted OPA’s Western Regional Exhibition.

While in Wichita for the conference, Harms plans to be part of OPA’s Wet Paint Competition, where artists get one day to paint either in the studio at Mark Arts or plein air. The works will be judged and displayed at Mark Arts, alongside the national exhibition.

In a recent phone conversation from his home in Colorado, Harms recalled some of the early experiences in Wichita that helped shape his life.

Living near the Joyland Amusement Park, he paid his mom back for his first set of drums, purchased second-hand at Uhlik Music, by working in the kitchen of a Sonic drive-in on South Oliver. That experience led to him being a touring musician playing rock bars and clubs in the 1980s.

He remembers getting an oil-painting set at age 14 and ditching school to try it out.

In 1996, after moving back to Colorado after pursuing acting gigs for a short time in Los Angeles, he started painting again. By 1999, he discovered plein air painting and became a landscape artist.

While he had some notable accolades early in his painting career —including being selected as one of the top 100 artists for the 2001 Arts for the Parks competition in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and being featured as an artist to watch by Southwest Art Magazine in 2004, Harms decided to pursue membership in OPA as a way to sort of measure his work.

“I knew that the artwork they accept to their juried shows, whether it’s their regional shows, their salon shows or the national Oil Painters of America show, the artwork is stunning. So, it was like, ‘I wonder if I actually am worthy to be juried into some of these shows. I’d really feel like I was onto something.’ I’m always grateful to have those kinds of quality eyeballs rendering my work worthy to be selected.”

His winning entry in this year’s national exhibition — his third since becoming an OPA member in 2017 — depicts a fall scene at Sarvis Creek, which is off a one-lane dirt road near Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Harms’ work has also appeared in five of OPA’s Western Regional Exhibitions, including the 2021 show in Wichita, which turned into a sort of celebratory homecoming.

“There were people who I hadn’t seen in more than 40 years who came to that show. It was so neat that people I grew up with came and were part of what I find thrilling to do and to share that experience. For a sentimental guy like me, that can’t be overstated,” Harms said.

But Harms isn’t the only one involved in the exhibition who is familiar with the Wichita area.

This year’s judge, Sherrie McGraw from Taos, N.M., was born in Wichita and would often visit after her family moved to Ponca City, Okla. Her great-great grandfather helped found Schulte, right outside Wichita.

“Apparently we are related to everyone in the graveyard there,” said McGraw, who along with her husband, David Leffel, is well-regarded in the art world.

Like Harms, Lincoln, Neb., artist Jeremy Goodding looks at acceptance into OPA’s juried shows as “a stamp of approval since OPA has clout and standing within the art world as having some worth. It helps get artists onto the national radar.”

Goodding is now an OPA board member. Among his awards from OPA, Goodding won the 2021 Wet Paint Competition and the Still Life Award of Excellence in the 2019 Western Regional.

Goodding focuses on still life works. His paintings tend to feature pottery pieces, like antique Spanish ones he inherited from his father-in-law, along with an element of nature, like a branch with berries.

His juried piece in this year’s national show, “In the Light of Solitude” features a singular pottery piece on a rustic block of wood with three crabapples, which have become “almost a signature thing in my painting.”

Unlike most of the artists in the upcoming OPA show, Billy Solitario is a newcomer to an OPA exhibition. Although he’s had a long art career, he’s a relatively new OPA member.

He’s earned art degrees from the University of South Florida and Tulane, has taught at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts where he studied and has been featured in several regional and coastal magazines. He also owns a gallery in New Orleans, where he lives.

His love for the Gulf Coast — where he grew up running around on john boats, walking trails, fishing and camping — is evident in his still life and landscape paintings.

“My whole upbringing was on the water,” Solitario said.

His piece in the national exhibition depicts a spot he’s often frequented: a houseboat named the Pelican that is moored under the clouds and blue sky on the primitive Chandeleur Islands chain between Mississippi and Alabama.

Oil Painters of America National Exhibition at Mark Arts

What: the premier annual exhibition of Oil Painters of America, being held for the first time in Kansas; OPA’s national conference meets April 2-7.

Where: Mark Arts, 1307 N. Rock Road

When: Friday, April 5-Friday, May 31; gallery hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. Opening reception is 6-9 p.m. Friday, April 5.

Admission: free

More info: 316-634-2787 or markartsks.com