"My paintings
are just of simple, everyday things that I hope people can look at and enjoy," says
Vaughan in her typically modest fashion. "It's fun for me to see people relate my
paintings to themselves and to their lives." Vaughan, who has been painting for 30
years, clearly loves what she does. "Even if I never got paid for it, I would paint
for the rest of my life," she says. "I really don't know why I paint; I just
love it. It's such an integral part of my life that I paint six days a week."
This emotional involvement in her work is reflected in every facet of her paintings: a
16-year-old girl posed in an old-fashioned ruffled petticoat and corset looking at a
lovely dress on a mannequin, a bouquet of fresh flowers with perhaps a cameo or letter
nearby, a wedding ring quilt set aside briefly while its owner talks with a neighbor.
"My art tends toward the decorative side," she says. "It is very feminine
art, and women are the ones who normally buy it. I do get a lot of ideas for paintings, so
I try to vary my prints. Still, I do paint one wedding piece and one Christmas piece every
year. I always keep my audience in mind regardless of what Iam painting." Vaughan
draws her inspiration from the things she knows first-hand, a trait that she has exhibited
since she first took up painting. "A lot of the first pieces I did were from down in
Mississippi where my grandparents lived," she says. "I started by painting the
barns there. Then I started painting quilts because they were in my grandmother's house. I
would throw a quilt over a chair and take pictures, then I'd come home and paint. My first
painting of women quilting were of my grandmother and the lady who lived across the road
from her. I have always tried to paint things I know, and that was what I knew more than
anything else."
Born in Mississippi and raised in Tennessee, Vaughan began to paint when her two sons were
very small. "I started painting after they were born," she says. "I had
always been interested in art, but I never really did anything about it before then. One
day, my sister-in-law, who also paints, came over. We got a canvas and some paints and we
did a floral that day. It did not take too long to do, and it was not too great. But I was
hooked. I started painting at night while my kids were asleep. I loved it. I would try to
paint some every day. For 15 years, I painted pretty much just for the enjoyment of it. I
never wanted anybody to see it."
All that changed after Vaughan's next door neighbor took some of her paintings to a nearby
gallery. "I used to sit on my front porch and paint, then throw away what I had
done," she says. "My neighbor took what she found in the trash to the gallery.
They called and asked if I could send them some to show. I was embarrassed at the time; I
couldn't figure out why anybody would want to buy them! But within a couple of years I
couldn't keep up with the demand for my originals. That's when I decided to go into
prints."
Vaughan started out in oils, changed to watercolors, and seven years ago returned to oils
because of the flexibility of the medium. "When I first started painting, I only
painted with neutral colors-browns and sepias," she says. "Then I started taking
watercolor classes. That brought color into my paintings because it was too hard to do
watercolors in sepia tones. I also started doing a lot of flowers and other subjects that
dictated that I bring soft colors in. Later, when I went back to my oils, my colors were a
lot stronger than they had been originally." "What I really want in my paintings
today is a lot of depth, with light and shadow," she adds. "A lot of times the
light in a picture is more important than color. I love the dark and the light and the
depth you get from that. So I am striving to bring my pictures alive with light rather
than a lot of color."
Vaughan often starts a work by taking photographs. For example, she says, "I went
down to Florida not long ago and took pictures of my granddaughter, who is taking ballet,
in different poses. I will use those photos as a starting point. Often I do sketches from
photographs for the initial part of a painting. Then I'll start free-handing and putting
in what I want. The rest of it is really spontaneous and from my imagination."
Vaughan says ideas for her paintings can take a long time to develop. "I pretty much
start a painting in my head six months to a year before I start painting it, which gives
me time to think things through. A lot of my ideas come to me in the middle of the night
when I can not sleep. And when I am stuck, I cry, I throw my canvasses-or I go shopping. A
painting is not something you can rush. Sometimes it can take a week just figuring out
where I want to go next with it."
Family has long played an important role in Vaughan's personal life and in her painting,
from her grandparents to her five-year-old granddaughter. "My granddaughter
influences my choice of subjects a lot now," Vaughan says. "Ever since she was
born I have taken a real interest in little girls. She has been a lot of fun for me
because I never had any sisters or daughters."
Creativity also seems to run in her immediate family. One son who lives near Memphis is a
chef. Her other son, who lives in Florida, is preparing to launch a career in photography.
"He does antique-type portrait work-sepia pictures that he hand-colors," says
Vaughan. "He dresses up children in antique clothes. I like that part because I get
to buy the clothes."
Vaughan's husband is a retired industrial arts teacher, and he also paints. "He had a
couple of prints published right after he retired, and they were relatively
successful," she says. "But he doesn't do much now. He's got a painting of a '56
Chevy with a young couple that's been sitting on his easel for six years now. He paints
about 20 minutes a year on it!"
A lot of people who own Vaughan's works do not necessarily have her paintings on the wall.
Every year for the past three years, cross-stitch pattern publisher Leisure Arts of Little
Rock has produced a book containing 12 of Vaughan's watercolors converted into patterns.
"The everyday woman can relate to them because they are very nostalgic and
romantic," says Vaughan, who is one of Leisure Arts most popular cross-stitch artist.
"They found that most cross-stitch is done by women under 30 and over 60. I have
always said my art appeals to the homemaker!"
Although Vaughan may describe her work as simple and decorative, she still puts a lot of
herself into each painting. "I love looking forward to a painting, planning it in my
mind. I know what I want it to look like. But when I get about two-thirds of the way into
it, you can figure I am going to have a bad week and be really depressed and down and hard
to live with. I will feel like everything is going wrong. I want to throw the painting
away and start over.
"I go through this with every painting," she continues. "But there comes a
time at the end when everything just seems to come together like magic. Everything is
right, and you know it. So by the time I finish, I usually really like a painting and get
very involved with it. But then I send the painting off to be printed. And after about a
week, when I get started on another one, the completed painting is totally out of my mind.
Evidently I am really fickle because my favorite painting always seems to be the one I
just finished."
Ever humble about her talent, Vaughan expresses her gratitude for discovering her gift for
art-and acknowledging the source of it. "Sometimes what God has planned for our lives
is so much better than what we plan for ourselves," she says. "All I ever wanted
to be was a housewife and a mother. When painting came along it was definitely for me and
for my enjoyment. Art has given me a lot of opportunities. It is fun and exciting and has
opened up a whole new world. I feel very blessed." |
