Crucial to his art practice and teaching

Wayne Thiebaud

 

On Wayne Thiebaud from a former student

I first met Wayne Thiebaud as his student at the University of California, Davis. Wayne Thiebaud was a remarkable teacher because he was so darned enthusiastic about the art that he loved. His joy from looking at art, questioning, and absorbing it was crucial to his art practice and teaching. He wanted to keep the tradition of looking from life and looking at art alive, and his class assignments often aligned with this approach.

The psychology of seeing and the role of memory fascinated Wayne. One of his assignments was to bring a shoebox (without the top), set it on its side, and arrange objects inside. A small mirror could be a reflective lake, blocks might be buildings, and rocks could be mountains. You looked, improvised, and mixed memory with pure invention — something he did in his own work.

Wayne encouraged copying work of artists you admired. Rather than faithfully replicating a painting, he integrated what interested him — like having access to more words to express yourself, instead of quoting someone else’s sentence. An assignment (that I later borrowed in my own teaching) was to copy a masterwork. We matched colors, brush marks, and rhythms as closely as possible. Remaking it yourself is a visceral, firsthand way to understand a painting’s structure. We learned that color is mercurial and slippery — its shade and vibrancy depends entirely on adjacent hues.

Wayne wanted his students to see the full range of color in what appeared to be one color. One project required us to use every color in our palettes in our paintings. With white objects on a white surface, the differences of light and dark came from the light source. Looking closely, we’d see hints of yellow, orange, pink, blue-violet, and lavender grays. The longer you looked, the stronger the colors became. It felt almost hallucinatory. Wayne used this phenomenon constantly in his work.

You’ll also see vivid colors outlining objects in his paintings. He said he accidentally discovered they made edges glow. When he demonstrated working from a still life, he’d sketch directly on the canvas with yellow paint, then adjust with red lines, and finish using blue. He’d apply more descriptive color, but bits of those bright colors remained. 

My fondest memories are from an independent study with two other students, one of them now my husband, Michael. Wayne invited us into his office. On the walls hung several paintings and a poster of a row of cakes. On a filing cabinet, he’d arranged shells, smooth and spiny. His desk was a jumble that included a yellow gumball dispenser. There were a few chairs, a frayed oriental rug, a coffee pot, a hot plate, and a jar of Skippy peanut butter. On another shelf, more books and a green Perrier bottle with a yellow daffodil. Trying to put us at ease, he’d make us coffee and offer cookies from a tin. He’d dress jauntily, wearing perhaps a blue-grey shirt with a brilliant red-orange tie. 

Before looking at our work, we’d discuss three very different artworks, describing what we saw and what we thought each work communicated. He believed a successful painting defined its own criteria for interpretation. Crouched on the floor showing us his new art books, he was teaching us visual literacy.