Conversation with Wayne Thiebaud, recorded March 16, 2009, in the sunlit offices at LeBarons Fine Art, Sacramento, California for the Loveland Museum of Art, Loveland, Colorado. Mr. Thiebaud said he had one hour to talk, but that easily slipped into ninety minutes--I could have stayed there all day listening to him. 

RF: When people write about your work they use such words and phrases as: ‘what happiness feels like’; ‘radiant rainbow outlines’; ‘dance of brushstrokes’; and, ‘joyful’. I wonder, is the light and humor in your work a reflection of you as a person or more influenced by something outside your control?

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Len Chmiel’s painting, his art and his life as a painter, gardener and vintner flow in the vein of ‘aestheticism’, very much in the same sense as artists such as James McNeill Whistler who avowed the belief that fine art and design carry equal status, and that art need not have a moral or didactic purpose; the pursuit of beauty is enough. The Water Series is, in many ways, a culmination of Chmiel’s lifelong artistic pursuit. The six paintings that make up this series come from on-the-spot paintings created over the last twenty-five years, and speak to his innate design ability that is ever entwined with his own aesthetic and deep understanding of art. As with Whistler, Chmiel understands perfectly that fine art is a melding of design and beauty. Through the clarity of pure water, Chmiel shines like no other American painter today. -RF

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