ARTISTS & ELDERS

Glenn Stultz: Out My Window

Glenn Stultz, Artist, 79 years old. I came to San Francisco in 1967 from a small town in Louisiana, drawn to the political activism and the countercultural energy of the City. About two years ago I began to make art. Before that I never thought of myself as an artist nor as someone who had any ability to draw. After I started doing it and forcing myself to look at books and other art, I started to gain some skill at it, and now I'm learning how to paint, too. I don’t have a singular inspiration; I just look out the window. I happen to be lucky enough to live somewhere where I have a good view, not a touristy view or anything, but a good view. So that's what I do. Because of the COVID you can't get outside much, so I go to my windows to draw. I don't look so much at present day artists as I do the older artists, especially of the late 19th century and turn of the 20th century. I'm trying to learn how to paint on a par with someone like Monet—I'm not going to say Van Gogh because I don't think anybody could do that—but Monet or Lautrec perhaps. I still have to improve my drawings skills. When we’re vaccinated and no longer in the pandemic, I want to go out into the City to draw: maybe Stow Lake at Golden Gate Park or the children's playground at the other end of the park; perhaps even where the windmills are, and maybe then downtown to draw some cityscapes. I just want to see if I can create on canvas something that's there that maybe people don't ordinarily think about when they see it. I like to bring something out of a place that I see.

Deirdre Visser is Curator of The Arts at CIIS in San Francisco and publisher of CHROMA books. She is currently writing a history of women and gender non-conforming woodworkers titled, Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking, which will be published by Routledge late this year. She loves drawing, banjo music, gardening, and being an aunt and godmother.