Copyright 2024 by Cynthia Staples, Chicago, IL. The book author and the artist retain sole copyright to their contributions to this book. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without prior permission in writing.
Contact Woman Made Gallery at general@womanmade.org
ISBN: 9798323519002
Catalog and cover designed by Karen M. Gutfreund, www.karengutfreund.com, @karengutfreundart
Art on Cover: Cynthia Staples, PensiveWoman(2022), oil on canvas, 30 x 22 inches
ARTWORK of Cynthia StaplesCynthia Staples Biography
Born in West Newbury, Massachusetts in 1944, and raised in rural Hunterdon County, New Jersey, Cynthia Kimball Staples was educated at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY.
Later relocating to Chicago, she attended the Art Institute of Chicago. At that time, Staples also studied sculpture and woodworking as an apprentice with noted sculptor Julian Harr. She later studied painting as an advanced student with artist Ed Paschke.
Her background includes graphic design and television illustration. She was employed for some years at WMAQ, the Chicago affiliate of NBCTV, where she provided various illustrations for medical specials, history programs and children's shows.
She has affiliations with Robin McCown Mumford Fine Arts Collection, Chicago, IL; Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL; Chicago Artists Coalition and ARC Gallery.
Staples' work has been shown in numerous venues and is in many private collections.
"Ihaveneverbeenalone.Therehavebeenso manywonderfulpeopleinmylifewhohavegiven mesupport,collectedmywork,toldtheirfriends, andlovedme. Theonewhoistheclosest(the imaginarybestfriendofmychildhood)ismywife, SandraGarber.Herfirstgifttomewasacentipede inajarofgrass.Itwasmy12-year-oldfriendwho finallyarrivedinmylife,andwehavebeengrowing uptogetherforthepast31years."
Cynthia StaplesCynthia Staples
Artist StatementI have needed to make pictures since I was very small, and early on, it became a way of surviving.
Drawing and cats were the two most comforting things I ever knew.
Being displaced as a child, living with strangers, I felt that nothing was mine, that I belonged nowhere. But a blank piece of paper was a space I could own. I struggled to draw figures, trees, buildings, and animals. People were the hardest. Faces. I could barely look at people. I drew cowboys and horses, boxers, savage battles with bloody body parts, beheadings (really hard to draw!), and I would have drawn a guillotine had I but known of it. I loved the color red and splashed it about freely. I hid my drawings.
I have struggled with alcohol and depression, being poor, using cheap materials and stuff I found in alleys. But I never stopped drawing and painting.
I could not focus on school. I could not pay attention. I wiggled, doodled, looked out windows wishing I were anywhere else. But there were books, and I read compulsively for the first 20 years of my life. I read everything: science, history, classics, art, and fiction lots of fiction. That gave me another place to live and allowed me to create more worlds in my mind.
As an adult, I tried out different styles. At the Pratt Institute in New York in the early ’60s, the rule was abstract expressionism. The gods then were Pollock, de Kooning, and Kline. I liked Rothko, but could not imagine painting like that. I tried but went back to the figure, in time for the resurgence of figurative painting.
In Chicago, I worked in a music store and as a short-order cook, a house painter, a cashier, a house cleaner, and a graphic artist. At WMAQ-TV, I was mentored by Jack Hakman, the art director. He became a lifelong friend, and I owe him much.
I got into a couple of alternative galleries, showed my neo-surreal stuff, and then my images of empowered nude women. It was the early days of the second wave of feminism, and it was a good time to paint nude women. My work was suffering from my drinking, as was the rest of my life. So, I stopped and did the program and got better.
I decided to do perfect still-life paintings: simple images of fruit and vegetables in space. To my surprise, people really wanted to buy these. I started with green apples.
Then, somehow, I attracted a representative who would sell all the paintings I could make. And those were the years of Green Apples, Yellow Pears, Ripe Bananas, Red Cabbages, Glowing Peppers . . . all painted in traditional underpaint and glazes. I enjoyed them eradicating all brushwork and making a surface smooth as glass. All process visually eliminated. My sense was that people might look at things such as vegetables differently. Notice them. I am very grateful to Robin McCown for her years of support, both professional and financial.
Eventually, making paintings of green apples began to seem like another job. And I did not have the conviction that making them bigger would make them better. I made them with vivid colors, breaking up the surfaces, throwing tangerine and vermillion backgrounds behind them. Then I started to let go.
Then came the election of 2016, when we all expected Hillary to win the first woman president, and it was time, and some of us knew her from Woman Made Gallery, where she came to visit when it was on Prairie Avenue. But, shockingly, Trump seized the presidency. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t be in my bedroom, went to my studio and started drawing in charcoal, weeping smudgy charcoal: the Bleak Series. It turned out to be about a dozen large charcoal drawings. Later I showed them at Woman Made Gallery. For me, Woman Made was a wonderful place that nurtured women artists. I am forever grateful to the indomitable Beate Minkovski.
I was beyond the Green Apple.
Continuing with charcoal, I did food. Figures with food. Hands. Hands with food. Then, piles of trash.
I began painting the trash images on 18-inch square canvases in tones of gray. Some days I would just walk through alleys and under the tracks taking pictures of trash, particularly if there were tires. I exhibited a series of 12 in Highland Park.
I spent a lot of time in cemeteries during the Covid lockdown. We went to the big cemeteries and saw herds of deer, birds, interesting headstones. I started taking pictures of the photos left on the stones, old and disintegrating in some cases. Then I made paintings of the faces. Soon, I was finding other faces and making paintings. I took surreptitious pictures on buses, trains, in public spaces. I started to think of it as just faces. I have collected old photos from old albums and thrift stores, and have even found them on the street, so I have piles of them. Now I paint them. Not portraits, I think, but faces. In my studio, crowded and dense as it has become, the faces multiply. Some are sepia, some monochromatic gray, some have color.
I have never been alone. There have been so many wonderful people in my life who have given me support, collected my work, told their friends, and loved me. The one who is the closest (the imaginary best friend of my childhood) is my wife, Sandra Garber. Her first gift to me was a centipede in a jar of grass. It was my 12-year-old friend who finally arrived in my life, and we have been growing up together for the past 31 years.
Summerof1934
(ca 1972), acrylic on Masonite, 36 x 24 inches
TreewithApple(1975), pencil on paper, 12 x 14 inches
TwoGuysfromJersey(1980), oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
AscendingFrog(1982), oil on canvas, 30 x19 inches
JumpingFrogs(1982), oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches
Lily Pads (1982), oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
CantaloupeandArtichokes(1996), oil on linen, 36 x 36 inches
RedGinger(1997), oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches
FiftyPeppers(1998), oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
RedCabbageII(1998), oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches
DancingChard(1998), oil on linen, 32 x 38 inches
CantaloupeRising
(2006), oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches
GarlicIII(2007), oil on linen, 29 x 24 inches
BigRoughApple(2007), oil on linen, 20 x 20 inches
GreenApplesandPlums(2007), oil on linen, 14 x 18 inches
ApplesIII(2008), oil on canvas, 15 x 15 inches
Sunflower(2014), oil on canvas, 24 x 18 inches
HandswithBread(2014), charcoal on paper, 32 x 48 inches
HandswithRaisinToast(2014), charcoal on paper, 32 x 40 inches
Sleep(2017), charcoal on paper, 11 x 14 inches
Aram (2018), oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
DystopiaI(2019), oil on canvas, 30 x 36 inches
TirewithWeeds(2019), oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches
TwoTrashBags
(2020), oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
Tyrone(2020), oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
Mrs.Couch(2022), oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches
Glenda(2022), oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches
Face(2022), oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
PensiveWoman(2023), oil on canvas, 30 x 22 inches
SELECTED SOLO SHOWS
CYNTHIA STAPLES
1985 Solo Show, Joseph Gross Gallery, Tucson, AZ
1984 Solo Show, ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL
SELECTED SHOWS
2020 Woman Made Gallery Chicago, IL: Bleak
2018 Highland Park Center Chicago, IL: TrashSeries
2017 Stola Gallery – various paintings
2005 Salon Show: Judy Phillips, Chicago, IL
2003 ARC Gallery: 30th Anniversary Show, Chicago, IL
2002 ARC Gallery: Affiliate Member’s Exhibition, Chicago, IL
2001 Salon Show: Judy Phillips, Chicago, IL
1998 Silver Salon: Arc Gallery, Chicago, IL
1998 ArtCalendarShow: Los Angeles Expo (award finalist)
1998 Union Images II, State of Illinois Building, Chicago, IL
1997 Woman Made Gallery: StillLifeShow , Chicago, IL
1997 Northwest Area Arts Council Tenth Annual Women’sWorks , Woodstock, IL
1996 Union Images: (100 Years of the Chicago Federation of Labor), State of Illinois Building, Chicago, IL
1996 ARC Gallery: Affiliate Member’s Exhibition, Chicago, IL
1996 Around the Coyote, Wicker Park, Chicago, IL
1995 ARC Gallery: Affiliate Member’s Exhibition, Chicago, IL
1993 ARC Gallery: 20th Anniversary Show, Chicago, IL
1993 New Town Artists Show, Chicago, IL
1990 New Town Artists Show, Chicago, IL
1983 ARC Gallery: 10th Anniversary Show, Chicago, IL
1981 ACelebrationofWomen , Some Girls Gallery, Chicago, IL
1981 NAME Gallery, Chicago, IL: TouchMeshow, Chicago, IL
1980 G.A.L.A.S. Show, Chicago, IL
1978 Mundelein College, Chicago, IL: Women’sSelvesinArt , Chicago, IL
1975 ThreeForm Gallery, Chicago, IL: SweatyPalmsShow , Chicago, IL
COLLECTIONS
Plumbers’ Pension and Welfare Fund, Chicago, IL
Plumbers’ Union, Local 130, Chicago, IL
Kemper Collection, Chicago, IL
International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades, Chicago, IL
Chicago Women in Trades, Chicago, IL
Jerome’s Red Ginger Restaurant, Chicago, IL
Chicago Federation of Labor, Chicago, IL
Numerous private collections
EDUCATION
Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
SAIC, Chicago, IL
AFFILIATIONS
Robin McCown Mumford Fine Arts Collection, Chicago, IL
ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL – Affiliate Member
Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
Chicago Artists Coalition
