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Conversations with Jacqueline Ziegler: A Lifetime of Art

photo by Larry Johnson

photo by Larry Johnson

photo by Larry Johnson

photo by Larry Johnson

Tuesday August 28, 2007

By Larry Johnson

    Jacqueline Ziegler paints with light, and light and shadow are what transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Colors with depth and texture capture the essence of whatever subject matter she deems worthy of her brush and canvas, and the mundane becomes alive and special under her expert guidance.

    I recently had the opportunity to talk with this intelligent woman and to savor a few of her magnificent oil paintings. We lined them up around the living room at her home in Middlebury East, as she explained the background of each and why and how they had come into existence.

    Jacqueline is not only a preeminent artist with brush and canvas but has managed to turn her own life, it would seem, into an artistic work in progress. Interestingly, the artist becomes a work of art. Her childhood was a very special and happy time of her life, even though she grew up during the Great Depression, with a semi-invalid mother and a father whose work required them to move a great deal, from one city to another. Despite these seeming adversities, Jacqueline told me that she was oblivious to what was happening to her family, and that her early years had been a blessing and  instrumental in  her later success as a highly sought after portraitist and still-life painter.

     She was born in Buffalo, New York, but Jacqueline’s roots go deep into New England soil.  Amos Cutler, a founder and the first permanent settler of Brandon, Vermont, was an ancestor. Amos cleared land in Neshobe---Brandon’s original name---on October 20, 1761, and wasn’t joined by another settler until the following year.  Jacqueline has felt very much at home in Middlebury, for the few years that she has lived here.

    Jacqueline confessed that she never went to a regular private or public school. Not until she was in her 50s did she enter a classroom and that was at Bryn Mawr. It seems that this well- known college was admitting a few students with “unusual” educational backgrounds, and her husband encouraged her to apply. During the interview, it was discovered by the interviewer that Jacqueline had neither attended elementary school or high school. What the interview did establish though was that Jacqueline was intelligent and very well educated. Her mother, a student of the classics and a follower of the American Transcendental movement, through readings of Emerson and Thoreau, had encouraged her daughter to read. Under her own volition and her mother’s guidance, Jacqueline attended the best of all schools---her own. If she is an example of what self-education can achieve, I believe it would be in the best interest of the next generation to  deinstitutionalize education and send all the kids home to learn.

     At an early age, Jacqueline expressed her desire to become a painter and her strong-minded mother encouraged her to paint every day, a practice that she religiously adhered to. At the age of 15, Jacqueline enrolled at the famous Minneapolis Art Museum School. Later, her parents moved to Boston where she came under the influence of  Alexander James, the son of William James the philosopher and the nephew of Henry James the writer. James, an accomplished painter in his own right, befriended the young woman and encouraged her to intensify her study of art. He became her long-term mentor and assigned her the task of sending him an original painting monthly, which he then critiqued.

     Jacqueline has made her reputation not only with still-life’s and portraits, but as an illustrator of children’s books. Over the years she has illustrated a number of books, mostly for Westminster Press in Philadelphia. However, watercolor is not her favorite medium, which book illustration requires. She prefers working in oils on still-life’s and portraits and her reputation and livelihood are derived primarily from these two disciplines.

     Jacqueline has painted people, and sometimes their beloved objects, from all over the planet. One young woman flew from London with her violin, a rare instrument built in the mid-1600s, in order for Jacqueline to paint it. Every day she would arrive at the artist’s door with the precious violin and wait while Jacqueline sketched it and finally committed it to canvas.

     Jacqueline Ziegler loves children and she loves painting them, and, she admitted, given the right circumstances, children are natural subjects. They are open and innocent and, if provided with a safe and entertaining environment, they enjoy being painted. They can also be very candid. She related the story of one small boy who arrived with his Teddy Bear named Snowflake. Jacqueline asked him if he ever talked to his Teddy Bear. “Oh, yes,” he replied, “sometimes.” She asked, “Does he ever talk to you?”  “No,” he replied. “How could he? He’s only a stuffed bear.”

     I believe that Jacqueline Ziegler’s ability to capture the essence of the person she is painting is due, in part, to the fact that she never works from photographs. She does have photographs taken of the subject before she begins ---she calls this her security blanket. But she does her sketching---sometimes upwards of 200 sketches---and her painting, with the person sitting in front of her. A photograph, she explained, is  only one moment in time. With a living human being there are many moments and many opportunities.

     You have an opportunity to meet Jacqueline Ziegler and to see some of her paintings at the Ilsley Library on Saturday, September 8th, from 2 to 3p.m. Do yourself a favor, write it on your calendar.

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