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Self-portrait of Jack Darling |
By KATHRYN WILLIS
FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR
Jack Darling was, for over 75 years, the compass rose that oriented generations of this region's artists in their personal visual explorations.
He maintained lifelong personal connections with famed American artists, and they reciprocated--for they, to his final days, readily praised Darling's amazing talent.
His sense of "true north" in what was genuine in visual expression was infallible. He mastered and conveyed a quintessentially American artistic sensibility, palpably visible in his love of color and vividness of line.
His skill in creating his own art and in helping others "see for themselves" is readily identified in the work of those who were lucky enough to learn from his able, innate touch.
Had he chosen to do so, Darling could have pursued an artistic career of national prominence, accompanied by both financial and professional fame. Instead, he chose to live out his life at his venerable tin-roofed home, "North Windsor," in King George County.
He earned his living as technical illustrator for the Navy at Dahlgren, yet kept his love for fine art alive by building an airy, light studio off the farmhouse's rear porch. There, he pursued his love of art and community of fellow artists by continuing the twice-weekly art sessions with the North Windsor Artists, who'd begun meeting in an old Dahlgren garage in 1963.
Darling is the direct descendent of an American tradition of realism best identified in the work of Andrew Wyeth. Darling's connections with narrative realism begin in his late teen years as a star under Thornton Oakley in Providence, Rhode Island.
Oakley had been trained by N.C. Wyeth, his lifelong friend (father to Andrew and grandfather of James). In turn, Oakley and Wyeth had been students of Howard Pyle, the 19th-century giant of American illustration.
Darling has additional ties to Robert Henri (of the Ashcan School) and Hans Hoffman (who is credited with shifting the center of the international art world from Paris to New York). Both are major 20th-century figures.
Yet for all these astounding credentials, Darling himself was unassuming, kind by nature, and modest both in manners and in means. Life was good at North Windsor, with friends who maintained their boyish impishness and love of story well into adulthood, right alongside Jack.
There, he lived and breathed art, producing works of evocative subtlety and occasionally haunting spirit, from his rich life and fond memory. His most striking gift was his astonishing talent at conceiving narrative compositions, compressing story and aesthetic into whirling lines that hold together as an organic whole under his light yet powerful execution.
With lively sparkle and ready smile, Darling nourished friendships even into his 90s. His loving, patient nature, his fondness for kind aphorisms, and most of all, his astonishing inner eye for art have become the stuff of regional legend, and he himself a regional treasure.
Kathryn Willis of Stafford County is an arts advocate working to establish a regional arts council. She can be reached at rapp_
Email: arts@yahoo.com.
