PORT TOWNSEND — Artist Jeanne Toal’s work has sparked an unprecedented response, Northwind Art spokesperson Diane Urbani said.
“We have not seen anything like this in the gallery,” Urbani said, referring to the reaction visitors have had — and the number of sales since Toal’s paintings went on view at Jeanette Best Gallery, Northwind’s downtown venue.
Sixteen of the local artist’s works have been purchased by people from Port Townsend to Seattle to Omaha, Neb. Only five Toal paintings are available until her show closes Monday.
These works, with titles such as “Cloud Gate,” “Morning,” “Sea Light” and “Sky Light,” are part of “Elemental,” the exhibition at Jeanette Best Gallery, 701 Water St.
Toal’s paintings are on view together with sculptures by the well-known Coupeville artist Jan Hoy.
Toal, who moved to Port Townsend in 2018, set up an art studio in a small garden shed in her backyard. In an artist talk she gave at the gallery in October, Toal talked about the life events that got her to this point.
She grew up in Reno, Nev., where she fell in love with the high desert, the high mountains and the endless horizon. As a young woman, she took an art class at the local YMCA; Toal vividly remembers her first mentor.
She had the perfect name, Betty Bliss, and “she was like a mischievous 11-year-old in an 85-year-old body,” Toal said.
And when Toal mistakenly bought watercolors for this oil painting class, they just laughed together and got on with it.
Toal later moved to California and began her first career as a medical writer. She’d wanted to be a doctor but didn’t have the means for medical school.
One day, after five years of writing, she saw a flyer for a drop-in center where breakfast was served to people who were living on the street. Toal went for a visit, met some of the men there and quit her writing job. She became a volunteer at the drop-in center and stayed for about 15 years.
When it came time for a change, Toal pursued her interest in bodywork.
“I grew up in a family without touch. So that was a whole new world,” she recalled.
Toal went on to serve as a bodyworker in hospice settings and at Children’s Hospital at Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif.
Then she moved on to her third career, working in refugee resettlement in Portland, Ore. Toal remembered visiting refugees who had almost nothing in their kitchens — but would bring out the single can of cola and share it with her.
Toal, 75, has coped with illness and loss in recent years, including glaucoma and multiple eye surgeries. She is nearly blind in one eye.
The artist pours her passion into her paintings. She never sets out with a plan, though. Using oil paint sticks and imitation gold leaf, she works on several paintings at a time.
At the same time, Toal’s art is infused with light. And Toal is fond of a quotation from the writer Lucille Clifton: “The light insists on itself in the world.”
Martha Worthley, an artist and the executive director of Northwind Art, has become an admirer of Toal’s work.
“Jeanne is a soulful, empathic person,” she said, “and that comes through in her paintings.”
