St. Augustine Record
You can sit in front of painter Christopher Still?s ?La Florida? triptych and get a pretty fair idea of Florida?s history. It pays, however, to have the artist as guide.
On Wednesday night, an audience in the Flagler Room at Flagler College got to hear from the artist and watch a video on what it took to create the three paintings which took four years and trips to Spain, Cuba and various locations in the state, including St. Augustine.
Still, who had already signed the paintings, added the March 27, 2013, date as the audience watched.
?People wanted to know why I was so insistent about March 27,? Still said. ?That was the day Easter fell on in 1513.?
As any Florida fourth grader can tell you, on April 2, 1513, Spaniard Ponce de Leon discovered the landmass he named La Florida. And, the name, Still explained, ties directly into the Easter season, what the Spanish termed Pascua Florida or Festival of Flowers.
?? Ponce de Leon would have just celebrated Easter before he named Florida,? explained Still as he and friends Ray Poynor and Don Dohrman put the finishing touches on the exhibit late Wednesday morning. Poynor designed the wooden showcase that unites the paintings.
?You can have ideas. My friends make it happen,? Still said of the finishing piece for his vision.
His work of art is a nod to Florida?s history as well as painting techniques from the 1500s to present. A triptych consists of three pieces and the form goes back to early Christian art. Those folding triptychs often served as altar pieces.
Still?s paintings are separate in this triptych, but the box setting draws them together. On the left and right ?where paintings of saints would normally go,? Still placed a kneeling Ponce de Leon on one panel and Susie Henry, the daughter of Seminole Indian medicine man Bobby Henry, on the other. The center painting features items that tie into the state and 500 years of history.
When friends joked the painting took 500 years to paint, Still replied it ?wouldn?t have been possible without these 500 years.?
For the Seminoles and other Indians, the arrival of Ponce de Leon wasn?t much of a cause for celebration, Still noted. The walls that form the background in the painting of Henry are modeled on those in the cell in the Castillo where Seminole leader Osceola was held prisoner.
The triptych now goes to Tallahassee and the governor?s mansion. It will be there during the month of April, as the state celebrates the 500th anniversary of Ponce de Leon?s discovery. Eventually the triptych will end up in a private collection, although it may make an appearance at several locations around the country.
Now that the appraisals have been done, Still admitted he?s having some second thoughts about additional travel for the paintings. And no matter what the value, he said, the paintings ?couldn?t be redone.?
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Art matters
Art has always mattered to Still who was born in Clearwater and grew up in colleges around Florida and Georgia as his father pursued academic degrees.
He was in the second- grade when he entered his first show. That was with other children; by the age of 17 he held his first one-man show. He won a full scholarship to Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and served an apprenticeship in traditional techniques in Florence, Italy. That training and attention to detail show through in his work, including his rich use of color and intricate compositions.
The three paintings that make up ?La Florida? are smaller than usual for Still. His murals hang in the Florida House among other places.
?La Florida? is about half-life size and that, he said, made painting more difficult as he worked out the details.
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Connections
Those details feature several salutes to St. Augustine including maps, a coin the citizens of St. Augustine gave Henry M. Flagler and an alligator, the models for which were courtesy of the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park.
St. Augustine and Flagler College also solved one of his painting problems.
Still?s original plan was for the background of the middle painting to feature a window with a view. But what could he use for the view without slighting another part of the state?
Then he saw a half-circle Tiffany glass that was part of the original decoration at the Ponce de Leon Hotel, now Flagler College. He used that for the background. If you look carefully at the window, you can make out a very light shadow in the shape of the Castillo de San Marcos.
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In Heade?s Studio
When artist Christopher Still came to St. Augustine he painted in the same ?cottage? once used by Martin Johnson Heade, one of the artists Henry Flagler set up in a studio on the grounds of his Ponce de Leon Hotel.
Heade, who died in St. Augustine in 1904, is now considered one of the major contributors to American representational art. Flagler College now maintains the studio.
Seminole Susie Henry posed in the studio for Still as he worked on one of the panels of his triptych ?La Florida.? He also used her as one of his models for his 2012 entry into the Viva Florida 500 poster contest.
His was the winning submission for the contest.
In 2010, Still was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. In 2012, the Tarpon Springs artist was designated artist in residence of the Florida Legislature.
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Getting It Right
For Christopher Still, his ?La Florida? was a chance to accurately portray the state?s natural elements.
Often, he notes, artists who have come to Florida quickly painted their pictures and then moved on, not always getting the details right.
Still went out of his way to get those details right. The green manchineel tree apple in his painting featuring Ponce de Leon was painted from nature. He went to the Everglades to get the poisonous apple and has the ?burn? marks on his left wrist to prove it.
The Calusa Indians used the sap and bark from the tree to coat their weapons. An arrow coated with the poisonous sap eventually caused Ponce de Leon?s death in 1521.
Source: http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/2013-03-27/artist-paints-history-florida
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