Pulaski resident Jim Bain art exhibit on display at The Center

By SHARON DODSON, The Center Staff
Commonwealth Journal

March 16, 2009 09:34 am

— The latest visual arts exhibit on display at The Center for Rural Development in Somerset features a collection of acrylic paintings by retired graphic artist Jim Bain, whose work has even been featured on a Hallmark Father’s Day greeting card.
Bain, who moved to Pulaski County two years ago from Port Charlotte, Fla., has selected some of his favorite and most treasured art to showcase in an exhibit on display through May 8 in the visual arts gallery in the front lobby and second floor of The Center.
Dianna Winstead, associate director of arts and culture, said she is pleased to welcome Bain as The Center’s featured gallery artist.
“It is a pleasure to host this extraordinary exhibit at The Center,” Winstead said. “It is Somerset’s good fortune to have such a talented artist living and painting in our community.”
One of the 10 paintings in Bain’s exhibit includes a scene depicting two sail boats on the Mediterranean Sea, an image that once caught the attention of Hallmark executives.
While serving as a young sailor aboard the aircraft carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1963, Bain pulled out his sketch pad to draw two sail boats near the Bosporus Strait on the Eastern Mediterranean. He forgot about the pencil sketch, which he had tucked inside a folder with a number of other drawings, until four years later when he was looking for an image to paint for a student art exhibit.
Bain, then a senior at the Art Institute of Boston, began painting the long-lost picturesque scene. Using a brush and pallet knife, he created “Mediter-ranean Morning,” which he considers among the best works of his 42-year career.
Bain’s talent did not go unnoticed by top executives at Hallmark, the largest manufacturer of greeting cards in the United States. In 1968, Hallmark purchased the rights to use the image in a Father’s Day greeting card, Bain said.
“Mediterranean Morning,” painted while he was a struggling student artist, is his most cherished work, he added. Bain gave the original painting to his mother as a Mother’s Day gift shortly after he exhibited it in the student art show. It is the only painting in the collection on exhibit at The Center that is not for sale.
A reception celebrating Bain’s visual arts exhibit will be held on Saturday, April 25, from 6-7 p.m. prior to the Center Stage performance of Orchestra Kentucky Bowling Green in The Center’s theatre. The reception will be hosted by Lake Cumberland Performing Arts and The Center and is open to the public.
A former graphic artist with a background in advertising and newspaper design, Bain began painting as a form of relaxation. He said he would come home from a hard day at the office, grab a paint brush and unwind.
“It was a way of letting off stream,” Bain recalled of his initial interest in painting. “I did it to get rid of the stress. It was a way for me to wind down.”
Three of the paintings on display at The Center reflect his interest in aviation. Bain served six years in the United States Navy and 16 years with the Massachusetts Air National Guard. He said his first work as an artist was painting decorative designs or names of pilot’s loved ones on the fuselage of military aircrafts – called “nose art” – while stationed aboard the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“City of Springfield” was inspired by a picture of racing legend and World War II General James “Jimmy” Doolittle’s record-setting Gee-Bee racing plane. Another painting, “Mixing it Up Over the Channel,” depicts an aerial combat scene between two German and British aircrafts engaged in a dogfight over the English Channel.
The largest painting, a 24-by-48-inch framed canvas, is a jungle scene of a Florida panther. Bain was motivated to paint the panther in its natural habitat after seeing the endangered species in an early morning chance encounter while driving down the street of his former home in Port Charlotte, Fla. The runaway panther, he said, darted between his car and a commercial truck shortly before sunrise.
The panther was not injured, but Bain’s fleeting glimpse of the big cat stuck in his mind and served as inspiration for the painting, which he said he also considers among his favorites.
The public can view these and more of Bain’s paintings in his exhibit, which is on display at The Center from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday and during extended weekend hours when the lobby area is open for special events. The Center is located at 2292 South U.S. 27 at traffic light 15 in Somerset.
For more information about the exhibit, contact Dianna Winstead, associate director of arts and culture, at 606-677-6000 or e-mail her at:
dwinstead@centertech.com

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