TRI In The News

Whitehead's Own Freedom of Expression is in Watercolors

From The Daily Progress

Original article available here

Paintings of big-eyed aliens and even stranger creatures, such as one with a head of teeth attached to an elongated neck, lined the hallways of the Rutherford Institute.

The Albemarle County nonprofit is known worldwide for providing free legal services to people whose constitutional and human rights have been threatened or violated. It certainly isn’t recognized as a hotbed for bizarre, abstract art.

Nonetheless, the institute recently was being used as a staging area for the artwork of its founder and president, John Whitehead. Dozens of his paintings were being readied for “Instant Karma: A Retrospective of Works in Oil and Watercolors,” an exhibit opening Sept. 7 at Firefish Gallery in Charlottesville.

A percentage of the proceeds from the sale of the paintings will be donated to the Rutherford Institute to support its efforts.

Although the artist has described his paintings as “childlike,” they still accomplish their intended purpose — making people think. What exactly viewers will be thinking when they study paintings like “Death Thoughts” or “Alice Cooper as Lady Gaga” likely will be as individualistic as the hard-to-ignore works.

Whitehead might be the only adult artist to routinely sprinkle glitter on his watercolors. His wife, Nisha, said the glitter “somehow crept into the paintings” when he started using it to gussy up things he was creating for his 5-year-old granddaughter.

Now he regularly applies the sparkly stuff to his paintings as a sort of branding technique.

“Sigrid Eilerton, the owner of Firefish Gallery, looked at some of my paintings and liked them — especially the glitter,” Whitehead said. “She said, ‘We’ll do a show,’ and that’s how the exhibit came about.

“She said there’s a theme to everything I do. And I am trying to communicate messages in my art.

“The goal of my painting is to make people stop and think.”

The paintings certainly will make people stop and look. Whitehead’s art apparently always has had the power to do that.

“I did a lot of drawing as a kid,” Whitehead said. “I remember in grade school, they would take away my drawings because they were weird.

“Things like weird guys with big noses jumping around. I still do that stuff, but now when I give them to people, they laugh.”

Whitehead’s parents wanted to encourage his artistic interests. To that end, they signed him up for a private art program when he was in high school.

Those six months of lessons turned out to be the only formal art training he would have. But he continued his own education by reading and regularly visiting art museums.

“I really got into art and started messing around with oils,” Whitehead said. “I liked what I did, and I started entering my paintings in an art contest The Daily Progress used to have every year.

“I’d always make the top 40, and that encouraged me. Three or four years ago, I got into watercolor and glittering, which makes it different.

“Painting is how I relax. Sometimes I’ll do three or four paintings in a week.”

Whitehead is also an author and filmmaker. Some years ago, he created an award-winning documentary series called “Grasping for the Wind.”

The series, focusing on art and movies, won two Silver World Medals at the New York Film and Video Festival. Whitehead also has authored more than two dozen books, including “The Change Manifesto” and “The Freedom Wars.”

But it’s the art that Whitehead creates at his kitchen table that allows him to capture on paper all the nondescript bugaboos that roam his vivid imagination. And with price tags that can accommodate most budgets, the art show provides an opportunity to procure some very original art.

“I’m a lawyer, so I sit at my desk all day doing legal stuff,” Whitehead said. “It’s great to go home in the evening and paint.

“I have ideas in my head, and I like to put those ideas on paper. I’m surprised and humbled that people respond to my art like they do.

“I don’t understand it. Students tell me they really like my art. When I ask them what they like about it, they say it’s really far out and weird.”

The exhibit, “Instant Karma: A Retrospective of Works in Oil and Watercolor” by John Whitehead, opens Sept. 7, at Firefish Gallery at 108 Second St. NW in Charlottesville. It will be up through Oct. 22. A percentage of the proceeds from the sale of the paintings will be donated to the Rutherford Institute to support its works.