The Cleveland County Arts Council will host a new exhibit featuring a lifetime of work by local artist, Hal Bryant.
A retrospective journey through the art of Hal Bryant will be on display from Sept. 5 through Oct. 24 at the Arts Council located at 111 S. Washington St.
The opening reception will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. on Sept. 5.
The art spans several decades – from the 1960s to current – and includes water colors, acrylics, landscapes, people and architecture.
Bryant said he had the arts council reach out to him several months ago about having a retrospective exhibit of his work.
“When they said it was to be a retrospective exhibit, I knew for it to be a true retrospective exhibit that it needed to cover artwork I had created throughout my whole career as an artist,” he said. “So I had to dig in my archives to find some of my earliest work from 1968, which was the year I graduated from high school.”
He said the exhibit covers 56 years.
Bryant said he took his first art course as an elective in his senior year of high school and started painting seriously while taking art classes with Professor James Rash at Gardner-Webb.
It was no easy feat collecting all the pieces featured in the exhibit.
“Over the 56 years that I’ve been doing artwork, I have sold a lot of pieces,” he said. “Therefore, I needed to contact various collectors about borrowing work to represent various time periods for this retrospective exhibit. There will be about 30 pieces borrowed from collectors and about another 30 from my family collection.”
Bryant said he has always enjoyed working with his hands and in addition to painting, he likes to work with wood and has done everything from cabinet work to moving and restoring old structures. “My favorite art medium fluctuates between acrylic and watercolor,” he said. “You can throw in a little graphite and pastel occasionally into the mix too. I have friends who really love to work with oil, but I never have bonded with it. I like subject matter that has a lot of texture, and it’s easier for me to portray texture with the fast drying media, like acrylic and watercolor. But other artists can capture textures beautifully with oil, but not me.”
He said two things inspire his work.
“One is trying to capture the effects that the passage of time has on things,” Bryant said. “Also, the beauty of the natural landscape and how ordinary objects, that have aged, fit into that landscape. When I was young, I would go with my father to see his dad, a retired widower farmer, who still lived in the old farmhouse near Pineville, North Carolina. I loved to explore the old farm buildings and the old two-story farmhouse. I’m sure that it was there that I learned to appreciate the effect that time has on things, and the beauty of soft light, traveling through wavy window glass, illuminating torn wallpaper on old plaster walls.”
Bryant was raised in Greenville, South Carolina, although both his parents had roots in North Carolina.
He said it was college – he attended Gardner-Webb University – that brought him back to the state.
“I had exhibited some of my paintings during my senior year at Gardner-Webb,” he said. “They were seen by Harvey Hamrick, a Shelby resident, who really liked my work and purchased some. Professor James Rash and Harvey Hamrick worked together to organize an artist-in-residence program at Gardner-Webb, making it possible for me to return to the college in 1973 and do a series of paintings on the vanishing south. “
While contemplating his next career move, he ran into the president of what was then called Cleveland Tech and was asked to teach. He created several curriculum art courses and while teaching, got his masters degree in art studio from the University of South Carolina.
He taught full-time at Cleveland Community College for 32 years and retired in 2007. He spent the next eight years teaching digital photography as an adjunct instructor.
These days the artist keeps busy with painting, photography, drone photography and woodworking projects.
“Those creative projects tend to make a lot of messy clutter, but my good and patient wife, Lee, puts up with it,” he said.
For more information on the art exhibit, visit the Cleveland County Arts Council on Facebook or the website, ccartscouncil.org.
