Retired carpenter now sought-after artist

Oct. 23—There are no stray or space-filling brush strokes in Curt Stanfield's paintings.

Each mark has a purpose.

That's how Rena Brouwer views Stanfield's renderings of skies, waterways, cornfields, sunsets, sunrises and mud puddles — mostly painted in one setting at sites within two miles of his rural Rosedale home. Brouwer knows artistic talent. For nearly a half-century, she's painted international award-winning pictures, taught the craft across the United States and now co-owns the popular Opera House Gallery in Delphi, Indiana.

Stanfield started painting three and half years ago, after he retired from carpentry. He's 59. His impressionist paintings now sell in Brouwer's gallery. They attract her patrons' attention like a magnet.

"His marks upon the canvas speak in a more refined visual language," Brouwer said last week. "I've spent my entire life trying to make my marks distinctive. He's done it in less than four years."

Adjectives such as "rare" and "remarkable" pepper descriptions of Stanfield's rise. Since almost accidentally entering the art field in 2017, Stanfield's paintings have received state and national honors and mentions, including from the National Oil & Acrylic Painters Society and American Impressionist Society. He got accepted into the prestigious Hoosier Salon artist-service organization on his first try. The elite artists of the renowned Brown County Art Guild voted Stanfield into their ranks unanimously last year, "which rarely happens, just on his art," said Roberta Chirko, the guild's gallery manager in Nashville, Indiana. "He got in right away, and started selling right away."

And, the Indiana Waterways project chose Stanfield as one of five artists to collectively paint scenes from 20 Indiana bodies of water for a book to be published next year and a traveling exhibition in 2023.

Sitting in a chair in his studio north of Rosedale, Stanfield shook his head in amazement as he retraced his path from hanging up his carpenter's belt to seeing price-tags of $1,461 on his paintings.

"I just have a gift, I guess," he said, as Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album playing softly in the background. Stanfield's T-shirt bore the seemingly incongruous Grateful Dead lyric, "The sky was yellow and the sun was blue."

Actually, Stanfield has gained a reputation for his perception of color, as well as his artwork's spontaneity.

"Part of my success is, I'm not basing my art on someone else's expectation," he said. "It's a personal thing. You find your own path. I paint like Curt."

His path to notoriety started unexpectedly indeed.

A few years ago, Stanfield and his wife granted their daughter's graduation wish with a vacation trip to Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico — their family's favorite destination. He'd just retired after 26 years in the local carpenters union. Their friends who live on the island coaxed Stanfield into painting a picture of the seaside scenery for a charity auction at the Siddhia Hutchinson Gallery to benefit the local Humane Society.

He hadn't painted since his days in teacher Rod Bradfield's class at Terre Haute North Vigo High School. Stanfield earned a bachelor's degree in graphic design at Indiana State University and worked 10 years as a design manager at Reuben H. Donnelley in Terre Haute, before joining the carpenters union, but that training and job didn't involve painting pictures.

Nonetheless, Stanfield agreed to paint a seaside picture, did so — using borrowed canvas, brushes and paint — and then went home to Indiana with his family.

Stanfield's friends back in Vieques soon told him his painting received third-place honors, a pleasant surprise.

"That lit the fuse," Stanfield recalled.

Busier now than ever

He joined the Rockville's Covered Bridge Art Association and the Indiana Plein Air Painters Association (IPAPA). Plein air artwork is done outdoors, typically in one setting, just as Stanfield had done on that island beach. Instead of ocean surf, he began focusing on farm fields, woods and roadsides around the rustic remoteness of Parke County.

Stanfield entered a IPAPA competition hosted by the Haan Museum of Indiana Art in Lafayette. "I didn't realize these were some of the best painters in the state. I had no idea," he said. "I said, 'I can't do this. These people are too good.' My wife made me go pack."

Stanfield won two awards and sold a piece.

"After that, it's been a crazy circus," he said.

His retirement plans changed quickly. "I thought I was going to be able to get all the chores done," he said, along with some woodworking and fishing.

Instead, "I'm on a dead run, seven days a week," Stanfield added. "I'm busier now than I ever was when I was working."

So, Stanfield paused his commission work. He paints what he wants, and still it's a full-time job. Stanfield's art pieces sell on his website at prices ranging from $685 for a 9-inch by 12-inch piece to 24-by-30s at $1,461 each. He travels to exhibitions and shows around the country. He's studied through a virtual one-on-one connection with Dutch impressionist Roos Schuring and learned alongside gracious Hoosier artists such as Jerry Smith of Crawfordsville, fellow Brown County Art Guild members Jeff Klinker, Brouwer and others.

Yet, most of Stanfield's development has come on his own, "by going through buckets of paint."

Chaos turns spectacular

His approach to outdoors scenery stands unique. A vivid, snow-covered farm field provides a perfect example. Its clouds, hazy sunlight and frozen cornstalk stubble look a bit blurry from just inches away, but then blend into a spectacular rural vista at a distance.

"If you get close up to my art, it's just chaos," Stanfield explained. "When you move back, you see it."

He paints in the impressionist style made famous by 19th-century French artists such as Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and noted for bright colors and an emphasis on the use of light. Stanfield's subjects can be as humble as a flooded, frozen cornfield or a mud puddle. He often completes them in plein air fashion in a single sitting, outdoors.

"I paint the stuff that nobody else pays attention to," he said.

For two weeks, Stanfield set up his easel at a nearby farm every night from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. He painted the same flooded field 14 times in a row. His art palette froze. He developed a sinus infection. A puzzled farmer asked Stanfield what he was doing, to which the artist answered, "I'm painting."

The resulting paintings catch eyes, though.

"I painted the exact same scene every day just to see how it would change," Stanfield said.

His "Muddy Reflection" painting happened at a moment of self-doubt. His attempts at painting in his studio had gone flat. "I was absolutely defeated," he recalled. So, he walked down to the creek bottoms.

"I just turned around and saw my reflection in that mud puddle and said, 'I've got to paint that,'" Stanfield said.

He admits to occasionally wondering what might've happened if he'd begun pursuing art in his younger years. "Lord only knows where I'd be," he said as his gray-flecked beard surrounded a grin.

He's doing pretty well, nonetheless. "He's achieved what so many artists have tried to attain," said Brouwer, his fellow Brown County Art Guild member and gallery owner in Delphi.

"If he continues like he's does now," Brouwer added, "Curt could be one of the top recognized artists in the nation."

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.