“It was lucky, I guess, that I didn’t know until my 50s that I could paint and draw,” said Rebecca Thompson. “Otherwise, I would have been very frustrated about lack of time. In fact, my 50s were a real pivotal time for me. I felt a new freedom, an empowerment. I took back my early childhood name, Rebecca, and set out to explore new territory.”
It was probably a childhood experience that squashed her feelings of wanting to be an artist. Born to schoolteachers Glenn and Gertrude Teeter at Magnet Cove, she said she drew hundreds of horses until her ineptitude made it too frustrating.
She studied French in college, but she couldn’t face the science requirements. “I probably have the most college credits of anyone in America without a college degree,” she said.
Thompson married at 20 and had two daughters, Susan Williams and Mary Ellen Pyle, but the marriage didn’t last. “When I was a single mother, I thought I would never have a life, period, much less a painting life. There didn’t seem to be enough time for my daughters, much less for creativity. It was survival mode,” she said.
At 33 she married Reed Thompson and had a son, Jonathan Thompson. Reed, also divorced, brought his son, Quin, into the mix. The couple now has three grandchildren, the oldest of which is 18, the youngest is 1.
“I have always squeezed in bits and pieces of creativity,” she said. “When my daughters were little, I sewed for them. Then I did needlepoint and gardened, anything I could work in around life’s other demands.”
The first job she had was as a customer service representative for Southwestern Bell. According to Thompson, it was not a good fit, but her creative urges were good. “I have written a gardening column for a local magazine, been a bookkeeper for a furniture store and a gardener at the Governor’s Mansion, sold shoes, sold clothes, sold antiques, had my own garden design business and now my own studio. I still garden, but since my garden is mature, it calls for much less time. And I was never a law-and-order gardener, so things are pretty loose. A friend very kindly calls my garden ‘romantic.’”
“For whatever success I have achieved, I am very grateful,” she humbly said. “To be able to do what I love most in the world and share it with other people still astonishes me. It gives me tremendous pleasure when someone chooses one of my pieces to live with.”
She said all her teachers have given her a gift, although she might not have recognized it at the time. One teacher told her she had done everything wrong that could possibly be done wrong. “I was angry and sad, but I learned something. You gotta have a thick skin to survive. I still hear the voices of those teachers in the studio, especially when I am stuck. One of them always bails me out. Patricia Palmer at the Arts Center was my very first teacher. She will always hold a special place in my heart.”
She works in oils, on canvas, linen or board. Her artist’s statement is “Most of my work involves a moment captured, a moment that implies narrative, real or imagined. By doing this, I hope to create a sense of anticipation and invite the participation of the viewer. I want to tell a story but let the viewer supply the details. Washes of light and atmospheric strokes of color are my tools.”
The artist said she’s incredibly lucky in that she has been able to study with the teacher of her dreams, T. Allen Lawson, a gifted teacher as well as artist who lives in Rockport, Maine. He has a very expressive style and a strong color sense. As a teacher he is able to bring his experience to each student while working within that student’s style. His work is in major museums, and he has done a painting for the White House Christmas cards.
For the first 10 or so years, Thompson painted for 8 hours every day—in the studio (or, when she didn’t have a studio, in the guest room) by 9:30 and out at 5:30. Now she paints 4 to 6 hours, sometimes more. Since she works on several paintings at once, she doesn’t get tired of it. She does have trouble stopping, especially if things are going well. But it’s the best time to quit, she said, because you will be excited about going back to the easel. The longest she has ever worked on a painting is three years.
Ironically, just as she was beginning to paint, she and Reed bought a house in Maine. “We now have an artist’s residence there where working artists can spend up to a month,” she said. “We have had the famous and not so famous.”
The first painting she ever wanted to hang on the wall was of a table and chair bathed in morning light. “I like painting everyday things we depend on but don’t always notice. We sit in chairs while we read, eat, think, mourn, wait, celebrate, relax, visit. Our favorite chair speaks of who we are. Have you noticed that we always sit in the same chair at the dining table and feel miffed when we come into a room and someone else is in ‘our chair’?”
Thompson continued, “One of my favorite commissions was a series of chair portraits. Each chair was special to a member of the family. I also like to paint a chair out of context, floating in air or sitting on a river bank. I hope it helps people think about ordinary objects in a different way.”
Three galleries show Thompson’s work: G. Watson Gallery in Maine, Greg Thompson Fine Art in Little Rock and Justus Fine Art in Hot Springs. She plans to add more galleries in the South. Her work is in collections on the East Coast, Arkansas, France and Bali.