From House To Home

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Pastel painter Stan Sperlak takes his own advice and then takes it one step further.

As a working artist who just completed his first major solo show at The Gilt Complex Gallery in Avalon, he knows the importance of appreciating, buying, and displaying original art. Hanging on his own walls are works by a range of landscape artists from Plein Aire painter William Lathrop to lithographer Herbert Pullinger.

But Sperlak is not content to create art and collect art. He also likes to collect artists.

Gathered in his Crow Creek Studio, at Cape Shore Gardens on Route 9, are a variety of carvings, ceramics, glass works, and photographs by emerging local artists whose work Sperlak helps to showcase.

Sperlak, however, is the only painter represented here. His work speaks for itself, and it is, after all, his studio. Having established a thriving upscale landscape design company, Sperlak took a chance on converting the garden center’s gift shop into a gallery and studio space for local artists. “It’s my studio with friends,” he explains.

A self-confessed “army brat,” Sperlak grew up traveling but settled in South Jersey because of old family ties. He is recognized locally, regionally, and even nationally as a unique voice in landscape art. His medium is primarily pastel on paper, but he also likes to use a method of “water painting” that requires what he calls a special “almost Zen” approach.

“It’s not experimental. A lot of artists have tried it, but I’m basically using pastels and water at the same time.” He prepares a Masonite board, chooses his palette and his subject, and then proceeds to paint “alla prima,” or all in one sitting. By creating a paste of liquid color and then applying various drying methods, Sperlak is always surprised by the result.

An example of the finished work can be found at www.stansperlak.com in the painting called Tell Me About Tomorrow. The stormy clouds look like something from a dream, and Sperlak says he really couldn’t have achieved that without taking an indirect path. “I’m trying to portray the beauty of storms without making them too figured out,” he says of the unique painting process.

The moisture on the painting is also often in the painting. Living at the South Jersey shore has taught Sperlak to scan the horizon and pay tribute to the water elements. His insights are unique because he can’t be content to simply appreciate the landscapes. As a landscape artist, he has to be able to deconstruct the elements and then bring them back to life.

“There is a certain subtleness in South Jersey.” He says he can’t help notice being surrounded by what he calls a vapor. “It’s like a veil in the sky of layers. Most people think of the sky as a big empty space. But the whole atmosphere is full of light and water. By layering all those colors through the painting, it makes the viewer feel like they’re at the shore. They can feel the moisture.”

Most recently, he has begun to incorporate people into his landscapes. This requires careful study on his part because he basically synthesizes two different ideas into one finished piece. “A lot of times my paintings are about quiet places, and people aren’t quiet things,” he says. But, in his studio, he combines his dramatic pastel landscapes with studies from his sketchbook of people interacting with the surrounding elements.

In a sense, this approach comes full circle from his days as a student at the Philadelphia College of the Fine Arts where his assignments often required figure work. After spending several years perfecting his pastel landscapes, he felt “ready for people again.”

But people create an interesting “problem.” He wants to create work that is vibrant and open to interpretation because he feels that this communication with the viewer creates a dialogue that completes his mission as an artist. “I’m sharing,” he says. “It’s not just about my emotions.”

He wonders aloud, though, if his landscape pastels more easily lend themselves to this back and forth interaction between the viewer and the artist. “Maybe that’s why some of the more peaceful paintings are better for me because they’re pretty open to communication,” he says. “A kid with a bucket on his head is less open for interpretation,” he says with a laugh.
Whatever the subject, Sperlak says pastels are his choice because it is gratifying on a very primitive level. Holding a chunk of pigment in his hand is what he calls “a seductive thing. No brushes. No palette knife. The medium is in your hand. It’s like cave painting,” he says.

As Sperlak continues his work, he says part of his commitment as an artist is to be shared in the context of private collections. “Not for people to say, ‘I have a Stan Sperlak painting,’ but because they like it.” He says it’s a two way street. “I need them to find just as much joy in collecting the art as I do in painting it.”