Charlotte Berry can no longer immortalize her clients on canvas. “One has to yield to the change or it?s maddening,” said the Edgewater artist, who has battled Parkinson?s Disease since 2001. “I?m sitting here fully medicated, but it?s not working and I?m thrashing about as I talk. Normally, I?m very self-controlled and poised.”
Berry?s illustrations and portraits have appeared in The Washington Post, Annapolis Capital and numerous juried exhibits throughout Maryland and the District of Columbia.
“I?ve always wanted to capture the essence of a person,” she said. “If you approach a picture the way most artists do, you would begin with a detail, maybe the eyes. I always tell my students you start with the whole thing. In order to get the essence one has to feel it and see it in the lines and colors of people.”
Berry believes gesture drawing, an exercise done by Da Vinci, helps artists draw a model?s soul. During the often-overlooked exercise, artists sketch their subjects? actions in 20 seconds.
“You do it so fast you have to perceive everything,” she said.
The result is crafting a presence, not merely a likeness.
Berry composes large portraits using photographs taken in natural light, she said. “Time creates a multitude of expressions and moods.”
As a student in the ?60s at the University of Maryland, Berry didn?t expect to become a portrait artist, but “was amazed at the range it gave,” she said.
“Women were hardly in any art textbooks then and the university saw portraits as a waste of time. They couldn?t wait to get rid of me. Most art schools had little or no interest in figurative painting or sculpture. Abstract was hot. Figurative art, including portrait, was not.”
At Maryland, Berry met intaglio printmaker and landscape painter, Dan Kuhne, who decades later became her second husband.
“In the very beginning there was some rivalry, but we figured that out pretty quickly and now we just support each other,” he said.
Parkinson?s recently forced Berry to give up her position at Anne Arundel Community College, where she taught art for over 20 years.
“That was a heartbreaker,” she said.
