PORT TOWNSEND — One day, Jan Hoy watched her art have an effect on a man who was just walking by.
“He stopped in front of it, and his shoulders dropped,” she recalled.
The tension left the man’s frame as he beheld one of Hoy’s sculptures.
Along with Jeanne Toal, who also works in the no-words-necessary realm of abstract art, Hoy will open a new show this Thursday. Titled “Elemental,” the exhibition will fill the front space of Northwind Art’s Jeanette Best Gallery, 701 Water St., with 21 Toal paintings and nine Hoy sculptures.
Toal, whose studio is in the woods behind her home in Port Townsend, and Hoy, who lives in Coupeville on Whidbey Island, will get together for a free, public artists’ talk on Oct. 17. The 6 p.m. conversation will take place in the gallery, surrounded by their artwork.
“Elemental” will then stay on view through Nov. 18; gallery hours are from noon to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Mondays. More information about Northwind shows and art classes can be found at NorthwindArt.org.
Growing up in Reno, Nev., Toal gazed out at the horizon. It, along with the colors of the mountains and sky, inspired her then and now. The artist loves the quotation by poet Lucille Clifton: “The light insists on itself in the world.”
Toal’s paintings are swathed with colors from oil pigment sticks and metal leaf. They mix images of mountains, clouds and changing light. Toal leaves each multi-layered surface unframed; she wants to allow space for the viewer to imagine what is beyond the painting.
Those who look have their own interpretations, naturally, and “it’s fun to hear what people see,” Toal said.
Hoy, for her part, revels in freedom of making abstract sculpture. She creates free of what she calls the inhibitions of traditional shapes, ideas and expectations.
Back when Hoy, now 76, entered college, she thought she had to study something “practical.” What she really wanted to do was make art.
Despite all of the “you can’t …” she heard, Hoy acted on her desire, went to the University of Washington, earned her fine arts degree and has lived her passion ever since.
Hoy’s sculptures do not come with a “message,” at least not one that can be expressed verbally.
“I want people to take it in, to feel the piece,” she said.
Its meaning for her? “Pure joy,” she said.
Toal’s art education began when she was in her 20s. She took a class at the YMCA and met an 85-year-old art teacher there, a woman “full of life,” she said. Toal learned much from this teacher, but she stopped painting as she began her career as a medical writer. She went on to be a social worker and bodyworker, and then worked in refugee resettlement.
After retirement, Toal, now 75, returned to art.
Hoy observed that her sculptures and Toal’s paintings are “both abstract and simple, but neither are simple to make. [Toal’s] works have so much layering and finessing.”
The two artists’ works are both subtle and strong, Hoy added.
“The Rough Side of the Mountain” is among Jeanne Toal’s paintings in “Elemental,” the new show at Northwind Art’s Jeanette Best Gallery.
Port Townsend artist Jeanne Toal is showing 21 paintings in “Elemental,” the new exhibition at Northwind Art’s Jeanette Best Gallery. (Diane Urbani/Northwind Art)
