Home > Art Happenings > Made in Hull, MA

Visual Arts: Made in Hull, MA

Gayle Lawson: A Dormant Talent Blossoms in Retirement

If I judged books by their covers, I would guess this about Gayle Lawson based on my 30 second first impression when I walked into her home on the ocean (almost in the ocean!): A smart, confident, detail oriented person who enjoys life and has a gift for balance, proximity and color lives here.

After interviewing Gale Lawson, I think my first impressions were correct. Gayle Lawson is a bright, well spoken, warm and friendly person who has developed her art along with developing a new social community through her involvement with the myriad of art organizations here in Hull and around the South Shore.

Originally from South Carolina, Gayle built a house in Hull in 1978, living here seasonally until she moved here full-time in 1993. In high school Gayle was interested in art and knew that she had talent in that area.

"I knew when I was in high school that I had some talent. Back then I thought vaguely about maybe doing something with it -- commercial art or something. I wasn't a genius, but knew this was something I liked and would be good at."

Her life took a very different turn, and she did not follow through with her interest in art, painting only twice in all those years.

"Between the time I got out of high school and the end of 1997 I did two paintings. I did one of my mom's dog for her and I did one of my aunt's dog for my aunt. That was absolutely the only painting I did from the time I got out of high school. But I always knew I had the ability and I always knew I liked it."

Asked how she then got started as an artist, she said, "We were having some work done on the house and they left these little pieces of wood lying around. My friend's mother died and she had had a whole bunch of acrylic paint that were new and had never been opened. My friend gave them to me and I stuck them in a chest. I ran across those one day in the summer of 97. I pulled them out and coincidentally there were these little pieces of wood sitting around, which were really neat. So I sat down and did a little painting of the beach out here with some seagulls in it and it came out good! So I went and got another piece of wood and I painted something else. Then I thought I'd get some big pieces of wood so went down to Home Depot and got some plywood, had them cut and tried some bigger stuff."

"It just kept coming out good and so I went to an artist that was pretty well known in Hull at the time and asked her "What do you think? Am I just wasting my time?" And she said, "This is terrific. I really love it. Just don't take any lessons!"

Gayle's works are very detailed with neat fine edges and crispy yet flowing scenes. She has a calming sense of balance in her paintings and the subject matter is very appealing. She paints mostly animals and paints in a few different styles, though all her works are clearly her own unique style -- much like her house: smart, detailed, warm with a comforting sense of balance, proportion, color and proximity.

"I paint birds, animals, fish, anything that's alive, but I rarely do paintings that do not have animals or fish or birds in them. It's what I like to do. It's what I get pleasure out of. I do everything pretty much from photographs, even my own cats. What I do is follow them around for weeks until I get really good shots of them. I've turned into a fairly decent photographer because of taking photographs of things I want to paint! I do a good bit of traveling and I travel all over this country, Europe and the Caribbean at least a couple of times a year and I take pictures like crazy!"

"What I do is paint in layers. When you look at the painting, it looks as though there's some depth to it. It's because I tricked the eye by making it look as if there are layers. It's deceptive because the turtles were the second layer that I painted from the back but when you look at the painting the turtles look like they are the second layer from the front. I position the turtles first for composition. The balance in these things is absolutely essential. And I just know that. I was born with that. It's an innate ability. I can take no credit for it."

Each painting takes about a month to create. "I don't work eight hours a day, but I probably put in 50 to 60 hours on a painting. I can sit for about two to four hours painting. When I am painting time speeds up. It truly does. I am truly amazed. I will look at my watch and start painting, and the next thing I know two hours will have gone by and it feels like 15 minutes to me."

Gayle came to Hull from Waltham, because she wanted to live by the ocean. "The reason I ended up in Hull is very simply because I wanted to live by the ocean. I looked and looked and looked and at the time I was looking, which was in the 70s, ocean front property was even expensive back then. Nowadays, you would never think anything of paying $125,000 for a lot on the ocean but in those days that was a lot of money and more money than I could afford. I kept seeing in the Sunday papers this little "Hull" and these reasonable, reasonable prices. So I said to a friend, "Let's just take a drive and look at this town and see what's wrong with it!"

"It was March and we came down and took a look around at all the beautiful scenery. I knew nothing about the background of the town. This ocean front lot was very reasonable and it was on sale -- a double lot for $16,000. I didn't have $16,000, but I had a few thousand dollars, borrowed the rest and I bought the lot. Two years later I built the house because you don't need a down payment once you bought the lot. That's how I ended up in Hull!"

Gayle grew up in South Carolina and in high school she took a job at the phone company as a switchboard operator. After five years with the phone company at the age of 21, wanting to travel the world and wanting to find a job outside of the telephone company, Gayle joined the Marine Corps. But Gayle did not end up traveling the world with the Marines and instead was stationed at Parris Island, South Carolina! "I was the only woman who could go home on the weekends!" And what did the Marine Corps's a sign her to do? Operate the telecommunications station!

"I never got out of the state of South Carolina and the Marine Corps put me right back into telecommunications! Of course I begged and pleaded "Please don't do this." The reason I got into the Marine Corps was to get away from South Carolina and telecommunications! But it turned out it was the best thing that ever happened to me. At 21 I was running a 24-hour operation and I had 60 people reporting to me. I came out of the Marine Corps at 23 years old with that kind of background where I had been supervising people and running a military telecommunications center. After that there was no chance but to be in telecommunications!"

Following her service with the Marine Corps Gayle was a telecommunications manager at Polaroid for 14 years. "I left that job and took an early severance program and got a job at the Bank of Boston and stayed there for about nine years. I took an early severance from there, planned on going back to work but my mother got very ill so I spent a couple of years going back and forth to South Carolina to spend a lot of time with her. Then I got ill the following year and by the time I a few years passed I realized I didn't have to go back to work and I could just retire. It was the best thing I ever did. I retired at 51--accidentally, but it turned out to be just great. I had a really good career, and a really interesting career. I put in the most modern systems that are still in use in the banks at Bank of America."

"A little while after I retired there was an ad in the paper in Hull that some artists are getting together to form some sort of an organization and so I went to the meeting at John Dykes house. Maybe 12 to 14 artists showed up and we talked about doing some events. We made ourselves the Hull Artist Studio Connection. The Hull Artist Studio Connection now is about 10 years old with about 40 to 60 members. We run the Studio at the Beach. I ran that pretty much by myself the first few years because I had the time and I had the business ability. We still run that Memorial Day through Labor Day."

Through her involvements with art organizations, Gayle began showing her work. "Once you get into an organization you start meeting all these other artists and we have some very, very good artists here in Hull -- some of the best artists on the South Shore. They belong to other artist organizations and they recommend them to you, introduce you to people in those groups and I now belong to the Weymouth Art Association, the Quincy Art Association, the Braintree Art Association, the North River Art Association and the South Shore Art Association in Cohasset."

"My first show was the big show they do in Quincy in August at Marina Bay. It's one of the largest art shows on the South Shore and includes 12 art associations. There were 300 to 400 entries and honestly, I didn't expect anything. I actually got an honorable mention! I was absolutely floored! It's a huge show, and I had only been painting for about a year and a half. And of course that just whets your appetite. You are competing with all of these really good artists, not just from the South Shore, but from all over. To get any award whatsoever is just incredible. What it does for your ego is just incredible."

Having someone buy your art is very validating. "I don't know which is better: winning Best of Show at a really good art show or selling a good-sized big painting. Both are just terrific. I guess I never thought of myself this way, but I was the boss in my jobs and I always had a lot of people reporting to me and always had a lot of responsibility. I think it's necessary for me to do something I feel successful at. I suspect, had I not had anything to do with shows and such that I might still paint, but it would probably be one or two paintings a year. But this is something I am successful at and it is very validating to win awards. In some ways it's a competition with certain people that I am absolutely thrilled if I get a first and they get a second!"

Through her art work, Gayle has created a network of friendships and community. "It was really wonderful for me to meet people all over town through art because I had just retired and most of my friends were from the North Shore where I had lived. I didn't really have a group here and now I have dozens of friends! Is has helped me to keep a focal point. I have so much to do now that I don't always have time for the art! Everything kind of mushrooms in life, you know? So I really am bitching at myself now in the last year because I haven't done any where near as much art as I had done before. I truly don't have time because of my social life!"

I interviewed Gayle during the first few hours of a nor 'easter and we sat in her living room which sits about as close to the ocean as you can get without being in the ocean! I ask Gayle what her favorite spot is in Hull, knowing full well the answer had to be right here in her living room. "I love this place. I love this house."

Back to Top