"County artist introducing Painting on weathered wood" from the June 29, 1967 Door County Advocate
By JIM ROBERTSON
Andrew Redmann, Fish Creek artist
County artist introducing
Painting on weathered wood
By JIM ROBERTSON
Redmann is an intense young man in love with rural America.
But it is a love he must share with his painting.
For a long time, the two were not compatible, at least not the way Redmann felt they should be.
Then one day, as he tells it, inspiration struck. "I've got it," he shouted to himself.
The result will come before the public eye Saturday night at the Peninsula Players, where Redmann will preview some 10 paintings in what he is calling his "Woodshed Series."
The series depicts the compatibility of Redmann's two loves, rural life and painting.
And it introduces a new, unique form of art, painting on weathered wood, the same type of wood that has become so popular in decorating schemes in Door county.
But the weathered wood is only part of the uniqueness of Redmann's paintings. He combines both inside still life and outside landscape to provide something of a three dimensional effect to his scenes.
The painting takes one inside the "woodshed" but also has him looking outside a window. The wood becomes part of the picture as the weathered wall with a shelf containing fruit and a variety of old fashioned objects. Then off to one side is the window and outside is the landscape, which can be either a rural scene familiar to Redmann or one which sometimes had caught his passing fancy, such as the fish docks at Algoma.
Weathered wood for future paintings
Redmann explains the mood of his pictures this 'way: "Think how much time you spend at the window, in the warmth and solitude of the indoors looking out at the cold and often foreboding outdoors."
It is this contrast that Redmann captures. He does not try to capture the gaiety and life of the tourist season, rather the loneliness and solitude of the county after the tourists are gone.
Deft hands wield a pallet knife
So far Redmann has confined his painting to still life. Figures will come later, in fact he already has sketched a few ideas, one slowing a woman standing in a wash tub in an old fashioned kitchen, her head turned towards the window which again draws the eye to an outdoor scene.
It is these rural scenes of a by-gone era that Redmann feels so deeply. He is not exactly a big city product but still grew up in the town of Shawano and vividly remembers summers spent on an uncle's farm in the country. "I was deeply affected by this rural life in an old setting," Redmann says. "It is life which I feel has gotten too little attention."
Redmann went on to the University of Wisconsin where, oddly enough, he majored not in art but in languages. While at Wisconsin, he and his wife lived in a converted barn near Verona, again reflecting their love for the country life. One visit was all they needed to be sold on Door county. "We knew this had to be it," Andy remembers.
The Redmanns first owned and operated the White Gull Inn at Fish Creek, then sold it to purchase the Feidler orchards a few miles south of Fish Creek. They have remodeled the farm home, a never ending job, they say, and Redmann paints in an upstairs attic type room, with a window that looks to the east over his backyard and orchard, forsaking the west and the busy, front running Highway 42.
Inside-outside inspiration
"Someday I hope to have a studio in that barn," Redmann says as he points to the white, tin-roofed building in his backyard. "Still, I rather like the coziness of this upstairs room. And it's close to the coffee pot and the refrigerator."
He contracts most of his orchard work to neighboring fruit grower Ray Slaby, Jr. It's the only thing he can do, he maintains, since he can only work when inspired and often the inspiration does not come until the three children--Andriette, 6, John, 3, and Marise, 2, are tucked off to bed and all is quiet. Then he may lose himself in his painting until exhaustion hits him at 4 a.m.
"Can you imagine getting up at 6 a.m. to start spraying?" he asks in an apologetic tone of a visiting fruit grower who might wonder why he doesn't stick to his own spraying guns.
But while Redmann does not have the passion for orchard work that he does for his painting, he thinks enough of his horticultural undertaking to have accepted the responsible positions of director of the Fruit Growers Cooperative and director and vice president of the Wisconsin Red Cherry Growers Association.
It was after his arrival on the farm that Redmann discovered his new artistic style. "I had run into so many "dead ends," he said of his early career. "I was groping."
It was after he had painted a few roadstand signs advertising the sale of his fruit that Redmann became conscious of a new, different kind of art. "Painting on wood as I was, I found I was getting more attention for the signs than for the product. It was along about this time that I suddenly realized I've got it."
Although painting on old wood may be considered quite original, Redmann is honest enough to point out that the old masters painted on wood as well as canvas.
And while his woodshed series is confined to realism, Redmann has no quarrel with abstract art, has even done his share of it. He points out the difference between a commercial artist and what the art world calls a fine artist, the commercial artist being one who paints as he is told to paint, the fine artist as he himself thinks he should paint.
Redmann considers himself a fine artist, who paints because this is what he wants to do. "I have to paint," he says while reflecting on the joy, satisfaction and creativity that add up to what he calls a "minor love affair" with a painting.
"But once it's done, then the affair is over," he says in the manner of a teenage boy who has just ditched another girl friend. "Then I'm through with it. Then it can be sold."
Redmann admits his paintings have to be sold, if only to maintain his independence as an artist and to support a growing family.
"You have to make a buck," he explains, "and a cherry orchard doesn't have a reputation for turning out too many." Even with a good price year coming up, Redmann's trees have been hard hit by frost.
Redmann uses no brushes when he paints, only pallet knives. A coffee can half full of cigar butts sits on the floor, a testimonial to the company a good cigar can give an artist as he paints through the night. He uses only five basic colors in his paintings and getting the right color often takes as long as putting the paint to picture. It took him hours to come up with the delft blue he wanted for a windmill scene on a cutting board, finally getting it from a mixture of cobalt blue, red and a touch of black.
But it is this persistence for the right colors, the old gathered wood and Andy' s love for rural life and his painting which have produced the unique form of art that once caused the artist to shout, "I've got it." It will come as no surprise if Saturday's first nighters at the Peninsula Players will echo, "Yes, he's got it."
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive