A painting by Gail Trent Risner in her “Floral Frenzy” exhibition, which will show from Aug. 7 to 31 at the Southside Art League’s Off Broadway Gallery. Risner, a Greenwood native, moved back to Indiana after Hurricane Ian in 2022.
SUBMITTED PHOTO
The floodwaters washed nearly everything away.
After Hurricane Ian slammed into the western coast of Florida in 2022, Gail Trent Risner found that the life she had built in ruins. The storm and its surging waters had decimated her home, including the airy studio where she would paint. It was all gone.
“Four-and-a-half feet of storm surge came through my studio and wiped out just everything in there,” she said. “That has kind of put a stop to my whole life.”
But despite the loss, the storm couldn’t sweep away Risner’s creative spirit. So the Greenwood native returned home.
Since returning to central Indiana, Risner has been hard at work building back up her collection of paintings. Her acrylic and oil paintings reflect inspiration in a sweeping variety of art movements, from Impressionism to Surrealism and Realism to Abstraction.
A collection of her works will be on display at the Southside Art League’s Off Broadway Gallery in “Floral Frenzy,” an exhibition showing from Aug. 7 to 31. Risner’s hope is those who see her artwork are immersed in the color, the lighting and the forms she’s painstakingly put to canvas.
“What I like about some of these large-scale florals is, it changes the feeling of the room. You’re not going to just see a little picture sitting over on a table — it’s going to be a feature of whatever room you’re in, just because the size of them,” she said. “I really appreciate the large size, and I hope people get into it.”
While colorful florals populate the upcoming exhibition, Risner’s first foray into artistic expression started in a much more earthy medium. She grew up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where dust storms would leave a thick, soft coating on the ground.
She found it to be a perfect medium for making designs.
“The storm would go through, and there would be an inch of soft, soft dust just laying there. You could press your fingers in there, and it made the most beautiful relief impressions. I remember spending a lot of time doing stuff like that,” she said.
Other natural elements of Risner’s upbringing contributed to her artistic style. Red sandstone rocks were just right for her sculptures of small animals, she said.
“Kids don’t have anything to play with there, so I’d kind of pound sandstone rocks until they were sand, and then I’d wet them and make them into little animals,” she said.
As she grew older, Risner started painting portraits of her classmates and anything else her imagination could conjure. After moving to Greenwood as a high school student, Risner found a niche in the art classes. She also earned the opportunity to attend summer workshops at John Herron School of Art.
Her composition and figure drawing classes during those workshops compelled her to follow her passion.
“I remember walking in and smelling the linseed oils and seeing that there were models in these classes, people were drawing them. It was a whole different world, and I was crazy about that whole scene. That cemented what I liked to do,” she said.
Risner earned her bachelor’s degree in fine arts at Northern Illinois University, then spent time studying at the Day Studio Workshop in San Francisco, California, where she learned a variety of different artistic techniques. One of the most unique was trompe l‘oeil — French for “fool the eye” — that involves the appearance of three-dimensional scenes on a flat surface.
She also worked in woodgraining, marbling and other faux finishes. Those skills were put to use in a variety of residential and commercial projects in the Chicago area.
“One of my friends wanted me to paint murals for their kids’ rooms. It got kind of popular back then. So I ended up getting into that big-time,” she said. “I’d paint whole-wall murals in stores and things like that.”
Risner eventually made her way to Naples, Florida, where she learned plein-air painting. She won several awards participating in paint-outs, including Third on Canvas in Naples, Paint the Beach in Fort Myers Beach and Wet Paint Live on Marco Island.
“I think (plein-air painting) is the most difficult thing to do, because you’re always dealing with the changing landscape and changing lighting. You have to paint fast,” she said. “But I kind of enjoyed painting fast, because it was such a challenge.”
Risner also taught small groups of aspiring artists in a three-hour follow-the-leader type format copying impressionist paintings with her company, Arty Parties. From her studio one block from the beach, she would paint big canvasses with a focus on florals.
Hurricane Anne changed all of that. After the storm destroyed her studio and home, she moved back to Greenwood to live.
“I’m just trying to get established as an artist here and meet people,” she said.
The Southside Art League has been instrumental in helping do that. When Risner saw a callout for a monthly exhibition, she signed up, even if she knew it would be kind of difficult to pull everything together in time.
“Floral Frenzy” contains Risner’s large-scale paintings of flowers and other plants. The exhibition showcases a change in style that she has employed, leaning heavily into more abstract painting than in the past.
“I’ll also include a few plein air paintings I have, for something a little bit different,” she said.
AT A GLANCE
“Floral Frenzy”
What: An exhibition of flower-themed artwork by Gail Trent Risner, a lifelong artist and Greenwood native who has moved back to Indiana from Florida.
When: Aug. 7-31
Where: Southside Art League Off Broadway Gallery, 299 E. Broadway St., Greenwood
Gallery hours: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday
Reception: Risner will host an open house reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Aug. 9. Light refreshments will be served.
