With some reserve, Karen Chesterman entered her home studio to find her paintings exactly where she left them a few months ago – leaning up against a gallery white wall, basking under the skylights.
Spring in Sioux City entices the artist away from Florida, where she’s gathered new inspirations on Pinterest including color combinations, oriental symbols and asemic writing, a form of meaningless calligraphy or nonsensical scribbles.
Her creative process involves less planning and more concentration on the present moment, experiencing an active meditation. There’s energy and editing, a mix of spontaneity and thoughtfulness that goes into each painting, some of which fetch $5,000.
“It’s hard to get back into the discipline,” she said, looking at the colored canvases in various stages of completion. “An artist’s middle name is self-doubt.”
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Chesterman, 68, didn’t discover her artistic talent until later in life.
As a child, she was sporty and shy. She played racquetball and tennis and ran. She went on to study physical education at Morningside College and married her high school sweetheart Cy W. Chesterman, whose great-grandfather founded the local bottling company.
For a year, she led physical education classes at South Sioux City High School. Pregnancy ended her short-lived teaching career. “I got to stay home,” she said. “I was very fortunate to be able to stay home with my boys.”
In the ‘80s, with her two sons in high school and college, she had a lot of free time and turned to volunteering as a docent at the Sioux City Art Center, then located at 513 Nebraska St.
There, she discovered art history, taught by education coordinator Marilyn Laufer.
“She was an inspiration,” Chesterman said. “The artists I fell in love with were the abstract expressionists. I started learning about it and couldn’t get enough.”
Her creativity was cultivated by multiple mentors, quality education and her mother, who instilled a productive work ethic.
She went back to school at the age of 35 and found guidance from Bill Welu and Mary Lonergan at Briar Cliff University.
Welu taught abstract expressionism and mentored her, allowing her to follow her muse.
“He let me work big,” she said. “He could see that’s what I wanted to do.”
As a nontraditional student, Chesterman knew what she liked. She had developed an interest in making large, energetic paintings reminiscent of works by Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. To that end, going from sports to art wasn’t such a stretch.
“If you think about the process, how I paint and the size I paint, it’s very physical,” she said. “The energy and the focus, it’s much like a sport, really. And you have to continually practice.”
She had the privilege of pursuing a master of fine arts degree from the University of South Dakota. That’s where she encountered professors that insisted students work in a certain way. The approach sometimes stifled her creative freedom but ultimately taught her to be resourceful and tenacious. And that experience pushed her to define herself as an artist.
She developed a painterly aesthetic and expressionist style, creating textural pieces that elicit emotion.
Though her mother’s only creative outlet seemed to be house painting – to such a degree that she was lightheartedly teased about adding so many layers that the walls were closing in – the other women in the family turned out to be artistically inclined. One of her sisters, Cathy Palmer, paints with a similar style and technique as Chesterman while the other, Debbie Feiges, makes sterling silver jewelry.
Chesterman said her parents had to work hard in blue-collar jobs. She patterns their industrious example to make art.
“You don’t get inspired,” she said. “You just come in and work three-four hours a day.”
When the snowbird returns to her studio, she sees a pile of paintbrushes propped up in a glass Coca-Cola pitcher and tubes of oil-based pigments scattered across a table.
Possibilities mingle with hard work, discipline and self-doubt.
