Local artist finds faces fascinating

The faces artist Lynn Strendin call to her, and she listens, capturing those she likes most in pencil portraits.

Strendin said art has always been an interest.

"I can remember my older sister in Kindergarten, I wanted to be starting school so I could learn about art," she said, adding that while she earned her diploma in nursing, she also took art classes in university.

But a 35-year career in nursing and raising a family curbed her time at the art easel.

In the years as a nurse, Strendin said she would do a couple of pieces a year, but simply did not have the time to devote to the craft in a significant way.

Having retired from nursing in 2009, Strendin has found she once again has time to draw.

"At this moment I'm spending some time getting back to my art work," she said.

And Strendin is becoming much more prolific with her art, which she still classifies "a hobby".

A series of her work currently hangs at the pARTners Art Gallery in the Yorkton Public Library, most of the works created "within the last few months."

The works in the show all focus on faces, something Strendin says draws her attention.

"It just always has," she said, adding " even when I was a child it was always faces

"I've always had the urge to draw people and faces. I just look at a person and know I really have to draw them."

Strendin said she can appreciate a landscape or a sunset but quickly added "it's not something I'm interested in personally."

Instead Strendin studies faces in the crowd at powwows, and bike rallies and farm auctions.

"I like to go out to different places, see different people and think 'I'd love to draw that person'," she said. "I'll go to a place and just look at the crowd. Sometimes I see a person I really want to draw."

At that time Strendin will snap a picture and at some point will sit down and draw the person.

"Sometimes I put them in a file for years later," she said.

There is an anonymity to her process.

"I don't always know who I'm drawing," she said, adding she will try to talk to the people, but that is not always possible.

Strendin admitted that she sometimes draws people she has not talked too "it is a bit of concern

"That's why I have to be very respectful."

So Strendin said she tries very hard to be true the face that inspires her.

"I try not to make too many changes," she said. "I try to be very respectful to the people."

While many faces are in a crowd, Strendin said only a few call to her to draw them.

"I like everybody I do," she said of her 'models'. "It's a compliment to them."

That is why Strendin only does people she has seen and been attracted to draw. It is a personal connection to the subject, which means she does not do commissions. Again she said she appreciates those who will draw someone's cute grandchild, or mother, but for her such work adds pressure to the act of drawing, and she does her art for herself.

As a nurse, Strendin said she had to be highly organized, and she is now applying that organization and regiment to her art, making sure to spend time drawing, or studying the craft four, or five days a week.

A typical drawing usually takes a day with pencil in hand, "but thinking about it can take longer than a day. I might think about it for a long time (before starting to draw)."

Once drawn, Strendin sleeps on the piece, checking it the next day to see if she wants to change anything. And then she puts her name on it.

"Once I sign it's done," she said, adding to maintain that discipline she will spray coat pieces to make it impossible to tinker with.

As an artist Strendin said there is a tendency to never be satisfied with a piece. That is why she rarely, if ever, hangs her work in her home, citing she does not want to walk by a piece everyday thinking about changes she could make.

But because she draws for herself, Strendin said selling her art has never been a big priority for her either. If someone wants a piece she'll part with it easily enough, having had the joy of creation already, but if they don't sell, they can rest in a drawer just as well too. She added doing work for herself means public reaction is not a primary motivator.

"It's hard when you're doing a picture for yourself to tell how other people will view it," she said, adding being commercial is not a goal. " I've done a lot of thinking about it. I'm not going to change just because of what will sell."

The show at the pARTners Gallery will hang through January 2014.