Artwork

Errett Callahan had another talent—he was once a full-time professional artist and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting (VCU 1973). In the 1960s and 1970s, before he entered anthropology, he produced over 300 paintings. He spent a year painting in Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa) and several years painting from coast to coast in the USA, mostly in the Southwest. In 1966 he had six one-man and group shows around the country, from New York City (Larcada Gallery) to Phoenix (Saddleback Gallery).

Callahan worked on this landscape over ten months, doing whatever he could to prolong the experience, not rushing it through to a premature completion. He reveled in the enjoyment of painting once again, but working, this time, in a “painterly” manner, in late 19th Century style. He did this because this is the type of painting he has personally enjoyed looking at over the years and which has stood the test of time. Callahan returned to his 30 year old tubes of oils and those of his late mother, Mary I. Callahan, who studied under Thornton Oakley, a student of Howard Pyle, at the Phila/PA Museum and School of Industrial Art, where Maxfield Parrish in this painting, as well as color field awareness and atmosphere and light, which were always central to Callahan’s earlier works.

Tobacco Row Mountain dominates the local landscape of the Lynchburg, VA area. The fiery sun rekindled the spark, and the urge to paint was re-born.

(The original painting is valued at $2000.)