George & Kay Northup, Hilltop Retreat, Western Art Collector, April 2015

INSIDE State of the Art: Texas • Painting the Old West • Scottsdale Art Auctions APRIL 2015

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Hilltop

Retreat

George and Kay Northup create and collect in their Fredericksburg home with exceptional views of the Texas Hill Country.

By John O’Hern Photography by Marc Bennett, White Oak Studio

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The living room of the home of George and Kay Northup features a variety of pieces of art, including weavings, wood carvings, bronzes, sketches and paintings. The couple lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for more than 40 years before making the move to Fredericksburg, Texas.

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In the hallway is George Northup’s bronze Doe, Ray, Me, and etchings and drawings by Hollis Williford (1940-2007). To the left is Kay Northup’s oil, Undisturbed. Kay notes the floor is end-cut mesquite with each piece placed individually.

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fter 42 years in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Kay Northup decided it was time to move back to her home state of Texas “…and I decided George better come with me.” Her husband George commented, ”Both our kids were ski racers and we came here to thaw out!” Painter Kay and sculptor George had been visiting Fredericksburg, Texas, for part of the winter since 2003. Even then they knew, “This is going to be an art place,” Kay recalls. In 2014 over 2 million tourists visited the Texas Hill Country town that is quickly becoming one of the country’s most active art destinations.

George was a sales executive with a pharmaceutical company in Chicago, and Kay was a flight attendant when they met—at the singles-only apartment complex they lived in.

She had been going to art school but left to work for American Airlines. They married and, in 1967, moved to Jackson Hole where they ran float trips on the Snake River, and George was a trout fishing guide in the summer and worked in a ski shop in the winter. Kay had a gallery on the square. George got into sculpture by chance and became a full-time artist in 1976. It wasn’t until the ’80s that Kay decided, “It’s finally time for me to do what

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I really ought to be doing.”

George explains, “I had an uncle who was an art director in Minneapolis and three aunts who were professional artists. I had three sisters who were accomplished artists but didn’t pursue it professionally. I was introduced to art in my youth and had an appreciation for fine art, but I only took one art class in college as an elective.

“In 1974 a friend was doing some pewter casting in a pretty primitive setup, and he offered a class, but I couldn’t afford it. So I swept

out the space to be able to take the class.”

Art had popped up intermittently in their lives but soon became their life. They ran art workshops in Jackson Hole to learn more. Ned Jacob and Bob Kuhn were among the artists who went out to do the workshops.

Along the way the Northups have acquired works from other artists both by trading and purchasing, which gives each piece a personal meaning.

Kay comments, “What we do has given us such an appreciation for art. We can never see Bob Kuhn, left, and George Northup with their collaboration River Crossing. Courtesy George and Kay Northup.

Hanging above an antique library table is a 1981 charcoal drawing by Ned Jacob inscribed “Happy Birthday Kay.” To the left is a pencil drawing, Whitetail Deer, by Bob Kuhn (1920-2007). Next to it is George Northup’s bronze, Brothers, No. 1 of an edition of 28. It is mounted on a walnut box with a cast sculpted medallion and drawer pulls.

A group of sketches by Bob Kuhn (19202007) hangs above the bronze, River Crossing, a collaboration between Kuhn and George Northup.

To the right is a photograph, Fall Elk, by Tom Mangelsen.

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Above: George Northup’s bronze, Hard Point, edition of 35, commands the top of a bookshelf. On the left is Scaling In, an etching by Churchill Ettinger (1903– 1984); an heirloom antique mantel clock; an African wood carving collected in Nairobi; and Kay Northup’s oil on panel Cold Rainy Day. Left: On a stone shelf is Chief of the Applewoods by Helen Hammond; Mountain Bluebird, a wood carving by Bill Rice (1931-2006); and Kay Northup’s oil on panel There’s A Bird In There.

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George and Kay Northup enjoy their hilltop view of the Texas Hill Country.

enough good art. There are always new things.

It’s just part of our life. One day we walked into an antique shop here in Fredericksburg and saw a dark, funky little painting. We recognized the subject was the Tetons, and when we looked more closely, we discovered it was by Archie Teater, a man who lived in Jackson Hole and painted on the square. He opened Jackson Hole Art Gallery in 1941. We just stood there and wrote a check.

“More recently,” she continues, “I walked into Kathryn Turner’s gallery in Jackson Hole and just happened to have enough resources and bought a piece off the wall. Her work speaks so clearly to me.”

The couple’s association with wildlife artist Kuhn began when George was 16 and blossomed in later years when both families became close friends.

“My uncle knew Kuhn professionally when he was an illustrator and had a lot of material about him. So I was familiar with his work.

Years later I was at a show of Kuhn’s work in the South and was standing in front of a painting of five Dall sheep in the snow. A man came up behind me and asked, ‘Did the artist get it right?’ I told him, ‘It looks pretty darn good.’ He replied, ‘That’s why it got in the show.’ When I turned around I recognized Bob Kuhn from the material my uncle had shown me years before.”

They became friends and later made many hunting and fishing trips together. George and Kay have become friends with many artists, trading work, exchanging ideas and techniques, and encouraging one another.

It was Hollis Williford who convinced Kay to get on with what she “ought to be doing.”

It was George who convinced Kuhn to do a bronze sculpture.

“Bob and I were fishing for trout on the Snake River. He was wonderful at fly-fishing.

I knew some of the hot spots on the river. Our comradeship allowed us to enjoy the fishing and to talk about technical things. He was only 100 feet away when a group of otters came around the bend and kind of exploded in front of him. He sat down and drew on a napkin what they had done. He handed it to me and said, ‘Here’s your next sculpture.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you do it?” But nothing ever came of it.”

Later, the two did collaborate when George agreed to make the armature for a sculpture, River Crossing, that Kuhn would model. “I did drawings and made suggestions,” George explains. “It was 5 feet long in the beginning, and I regrouped and repositioned it. When Bob was working on the texture I made some comments. He said, ‘Show me what you mean. I’m a two-dimensional artist doing a three-dimensional piece!’ He insisted we both sign the sculpture, but its 80 percent Bob.”

The couple collects work their friends have done, but also work by other artists they see as fresh, that breaks from tradition and, as George says, “isn’t shopworn.”

Works in their collection arrive in many ways. “George and I showed in the Western Visions show in Jackson when it first began.

One year I was so in love with Bill Rice’s sculpture Mountain Bluebird that our friends got together and purchased it for me as a gift,” says Kay. “It now sits on the mantel next to Helen Hammond’s Chief of the Applewoods, which was a wedding present.”

The closeness and mutual support among these artists and friends has resulted in a very personal collection and life of deep connections.

“One of the things that’s so magical about this art business,” George explains, “is the associations with other artists who are willing to share what they know with younger artists who are trying to get their feet under them.

The established artists know when you care about what you’re doing and what they’re doing. If you have an open mind there’s always an open door.”

Santa Fe Editor John O’Hern, who has retired after 30 years in the museum business, specifically as the Executive Director and Curator of the Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, N.Y., is the originator of the internationally acclaimed Re-presenting Representation exhibitions. He writes for gallery publications around the world, including regular features on Art Market Insights in American Art Collector magazine. Having succumbed to the lure of the West, he now lives in what he refers to as a “converted adobe goat shed,” in the high desert of New Mexico, where he is acquainting himself with new flora and fauna.

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