Monthaven Art and Cultural Center

Monthaven Arts and Cultural Center
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Steve Wariner

Monthaven

Paintings by Steve Wariner

The Flip Side

Steve Wariner is well known to true-blue country music fans. Over the course of a 50-plus-year music career, the famed songwriter and instrumentalist sent more than a dozen songs to the top of the country music charts. Less well known is Wariner’s parallel passion for painting.

Monthaven Arts and Cultural Center shined a spotlight on Wariner’s visual art works in The Flip Side: Paintings by Steve Wariner. The exhibit featured 60 of Wariner’s works in oil, acrylic, watercolor and mixed media. It was the most prominent display of Wariner’s artworks since 2013’s Wariner’s Watercolors at the Tennessee State Museum.

Wariner has pursued painting with alacrity since childhood. Growing up in suburban Indiana, he was inspired to paint by his brother David, a gifted professional artist known for his book and album-cover illustrations. Wariner was especially attracted to watercolor.

Wariner’s watercolor style is loose and spontaneous, resulting in images he refers to as “washy.” His preferred subjects often reflect the people and places he has seen during his many travels as a musician. Rural landscapes, seascapes, portraits and guitars often figure prominently in his paintings. Another focus are his paintings of musicians, like the club singer and jazz trio seen in his watercolor “The Crooning.”

Interestingly, he resisted painting in oil for years. But starting in 2020, he began to experiment. Oil paintings like his “Purple Presence” are richly layered and textured, with the artist sometimes spending weeks on one work. Wariner now works in multiple mediums, from oil to encaustic. He also seems perfectly at home painting works that are both representational and abstract.

To listen to Wariner’s interview on our podcast MACC Talk, click the button below.

Steve Wariner
MACC TALK

Robin Willis

HEALING ARTS COORDINATOR

Robin Willis is the MACC’s Healing Arts Coordinator. She also works as the Exhibition and Events Manager and Director of Outreach. Robin has a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Clemson University with a minor in Entrepreneurship. She is a multi-discipline artist with emphasis in writing, mixed media abstract painting, alternative process photography, collage, and book arts and binding. In addition to her art practices, she holds several healing modalities certificates, such as extensive kundalini yoga teacher training and education, Reiki master, systemic family constellation facilitator, and depth psychology-based therapy trainings. As an avid learner, she explores and encourages others in their exploration in art, psyche, and our relationship to the micro and macro worlds within and around us. Influenced by John Muir’s quote, When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe, she fuses art, healing, and organization throughout her work and personal life as a creative-scientist minded person.

Kaylin Warden

Creative Design and Operations Manager

Kaylin Warden serves as the MACC’s Creative Design and Operations Manager. In this post, she oversees the organization’s graphic design work for exhibitions, events and special projects. She also coordinates the MACC’s arts outreach activities and assists with bookkeeping, among other duties. Kaylin, above all, is passionate about the arts. It comes as no surprise, then, that she is now pursuing a master’s degree in art history. When she’s not at the MACC, you can find her reading her favorite books (especially ones dealing with maritime mysteries), cooking, gardening, playing with her cat and two dogs, and cheering for the Nashville Predators.

Ruth Chase

Regional Arts Director
Ruth Chase is the Regional Arts Director of Monthaven Arts and Cultural Center, joining the team in 2023. For Ruth, the job is all about community, bringing people together to uplift and educate artists and art lovers alike. Her role at Monthaven is to strengthen the local artist community and build connections that will enrich Hendersonville and our surrounding communities through art exhibitions, art education, and opportunities for regional artists.
 
Prior to joining Monthaven, Ruth worked in the arts for over 30 years and is a multimedia artist and graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute. Her artistic practice is inquiry-based and engages in community bridge-building. She was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from the City of Los Angeles, curated and juried exhibitions, and has taught at the Crocker Art Museum.
 
Ruth was awarded an Artist-in-Residence for Artist Activating Communities through a grant from the California Arts Council for three consecutive years. Her film Belonging screened at both the 18th Annual Nevada City Film Festival and Wild & Scenic Film Festival. She has received the Legendary Female Artist of Venice award, and she has exhibited in The Crocker Kingsley, the Museum of Northern California Art, and the Diego Rivera Gallery at the San Francisco Art Institute. Ruth also continues her work as a Curatorial Consultant and Art director for the Californian Indigenous Research Project, where she has worked with the local tribe since 2018. 
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