CARL EVERS:
This painter of dreadnoughts firing broadsides and four-masters shouldering their way through Cape Horn Seas is above all a caring and gentle man-and incidentally, a first-rate cook. by Jean Evers Besides be ing a fi ne artist, Carl Evers is a fi ne husband . I can testi fy, since we mark our twentieth year together this January. He is gentle, witty, hard-working and cooks gourmet meals. By coincidence, our twenty years mark this transition fro m a success in advertising art to the new fie ld of fin e art. But. . .therein lies the story. Since every story has a beginning, we start with Carl 's bi rth in Dortmund , Germany, 19ITT. Hi s father was British, which made Carl a Briti sh citizen and his mother, herself an artist, was German. After high school education in Ge rmany when Carl showed his art talent early, he attended the Slade School ofFine Art in London. He wo rked fi rst with a printing firm until he was called fo r a post with the adve rtising firm of E rwin \vasey in Sweden to do Ford automoti ve illustrating. T he j ob was supposed to be fo r six months, but hi s stay in Sweden extended to sixteen years. There, in other agencies, he concent rated on art fo r Packard , International Harvester and the Jeep. He portrayed vehicles on the job in all kinds of terrain . While he was busy on these automoti ve accounts, he was dri ven anyw here he wished to go. In post World Wa r I Germany, there we re no cars , only bicycles to get about on. So Carl never learned to dri ve- and still doesn't. I am his willing chauffe ur.
Marine Yearning A lthough he could command his price in the automotive fie ld , something was mi ssing in hi s artistic goals. Maybe one day, Carl simpl y decided he had painted his last wheel. His father had been a marine engineer and though Carl 's home town was not a seaport , he had happy memories of his boyhood trips to the No rth Sea.
In Sweden, he fo und the sea available and started painting water and ships in his spare time fo r Swedish American and Johnson Lines. He made a major decision to come to the United States, the land of opportunity, in 1947. Sweden and even England had turned socialist and taxes were high on individuals. He decided to make a break and pursue his goal as a marine artist. To this end , he traveled on a Johnson Line freighter. Wishing to experience the sea fu ll y, he sketched his way along, recording water and waves, sky action and the life of seapo rts touched at , arri ving at last in San Francisco. There sketches came in very handy for later commercial assignments and his fin e art. Carl has a habit of researching his every endeavor- a habit that led to an amusing encounter in San Francisco the day he arrived in this country. He was wea ring an "American-style" suit he had o rdered fo r his new 1ife and had memori zed much of the map of San Francisco, the city that had captured his imag ination. As he stepped from his hotel for the first time to explore the city, a stranger as ked him how to find a certain street. Carl replied , " One block down and two to the left." He returned enchanted . He had passed fo r a San Franciscan! It had become evident , however, that New York City was the best place to market his talents. He crossed the country and , with samples, soon was in the marine art business, both oils and watercolors. Watercolor, later, became his chief medium . Adm iral Edmond J. Moran, of Mo ran Towing and Transportation, was an earl y enthusiast for Carl 's work. Covers for Towlin e, the Moran publication, became prints popular around the world . The Grace Line, Farrell Lines, United Fruit , Cunard and others kept Carl busy and established his reputation for skill with ships and the sea in its many moods in differing locations. One secret of his success with settings is his pass ion for geography and resulting study- practicall y a hobby. He knows the volcanoes in Hawaii , the shoreline for surfers in the Philippines, the coasts of South Ameri ca and can place his ships in surroundings so acc urate that even a nati ve has never fo und fault. Oceanic geography enters here also- the way currents flow the hues of shore waters and the Gulf Stream, the deeps of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. By observation he learned optics- how light behaves on water surfaces , placid or in motion, how the sun and sky are reflected by the sea. T his process of observation never ceases. During these producti ve yea rs in New York , Carl had an aversion to passenger planes. Although he painted 36 objects fo r General Dynamics , showing a plane high in the sky in settings around the world (geography at play, here) , he refused other airline ass ignments because he fe lt planes were hurting the survival of ships and trains, his favorite vehicles. Today, accepting that a plane is the fastest way to travel, we fl y in them as needed. A majo r ass ignment involved 13 years of painting action around the Port of Philadelphia for Phil adelphia El ectric Company, seen as full pages in The Saturday Evening Post and other publications. Nature going out of co/lf rol , might be a title to this Florida hurricane scene-a thing of savage beauty and th reat, and a swirling sense of motion f eeding motion that is a hallmark of much of Evers's work. Another hallma rk is evidelll here, the sense of immediacy, of presence: you f eel the solidity of the wind Th aTshrieks Through Th ose protesting palm Trees and heaps up That harried water: ii is a real , and awesome presence.
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SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1984