Life & Work with R. Gregory Summers

Today we’d like to introduce you to R. Gregory Summers.

Hi R. Gregory, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Born in the Flint Hills of Kansas with four sisters and one brother, my father was a cowboy turned truck driver, and Mom stayed home trying to raise us kids.

Served in the USAF at the end of the Vietnam War, I went straight to study art at Johnson County Community College on the GI Bill. Here I met Prof Jean Howard who took me under her wing and taught me painting.

My professional career as an artist began in 1979 at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, Missouri, where I learned the art of sculpting in metal and continued as a Master Engraver for the next 40 years.

The 21st century brought many changes in my life. The biggest was the realization that drugs & alcohol were not the cure-all that I thought it was and that the only way forward was to put it behind. With this knowledge and a third marriage, I put the past behind me and dove head on into the world of oils and painting, stepping outdoors for the first time and found that you can combine painting with the great outdoors.

Late 2011, I met who was to be my mentor till his untimely death. Rick Howell was not only one of the most talented artists I had ever met, but above that he loved people and saw belief and hopes in each and everyone, and taught me to believe in myself.

In 2012 I began the Missouri Valley Impressionist Society with artists Jeff Sparks, Rachel Mindrup, and Brett Seevers looking to help other like-minded artists find avenues to share their talents with the region, then with local artist Anne Garney we began the Brush Creek Art Walk, an outdoor painting competition in Kansas City that are both going strong.

With my love for painting outdoors piqued I began entering competitions around the country doing well, winning awards, selling artwork and meeting others who work the plein air circuit. There is an amazing group of very talented artists working the plein air events across the country, some of the best the nation has to offer, and many are very open to helping others and teaching them along the way.

During the pandemic, I took advantage of being home and combined my love of history by taking old photos found across the web of early Kansas City and have began reinterpreting these photos in my painterly way, adding color and a little bit of atmosphere to bring part of what was lost through time in this city.

While working on this project, the doctors discovered cancer in my bones, a Multiple Myeloma and began treatment just this year, and have recently undergone a Stem Cell transplant, successfully I might add, and I am just recently back to paintings.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I’m wondering how many people my age or older have actually had a smooth road through life? Mine has definitely not been smooth. It’s been a roller coaster of highs and lows, both extremes being totally unimaginable to myself as I sit here reflecting. I was a bit of a rebel type freak growing up, being kicked out of high school my senior year while sitting on the back steps smoking and pondering what we would do with a three day suspension from school, and when caught they decided that this was the last straw so the kicked us out for good. Parents of course wanted me to get a job, so I enlisted in the USAF, which funded my commercial art program at the JCCC.

My ups and downs from this point on were dizzying, all self-induced due to the alcohol and drug use. Hitting a definite bottom in 2002 when landing in jail with a DUI and getting served with divorce papers while I was in there. I had hit a low, but I was resolved to crawl out of my bottom and find my way out. I began painting again, which I had not done for almost 20 years with the career, family and my substance abuse taking all of my time.

I found painting a wonderful substitute for problems and continued with it as I found a new wife who believed in me, and actually pushed me to follow my passions, and encouraging me to sign up for a continuing education course at the Art Institute in Plein Air painting which I had never heard of.

Finding that one could combine art and the great outdoors was like a dream come true and I took to it with a vengeance.

Most recently, I had been diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a bone cancer that was found by accident by the very vigilant family doctor I’d been seeing for decades who noticed some changes in my blood counts when going in for an injury I sustained playing tennis.

I began treatment this February and in June had a Stem Cell Transplant where I am now just past day 100 and can again return to the life of the living and proceed with caution mind you, as I slowly regain all my vaccines that were wiped out in me before receiving the transplant.

Those are the major “bumps” in my long windy road to where I am, the rest are to be told by my sisters at family reunions just to embarrass me in front of my children and grandkids.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My life as a child and teen was crazy fun, but because of that I spent many many hours in time-out. Here I found a way to while away the hours by reading and drawing. I would love doing illustrations for many of the mysteries I read, and if they already had them, I would deconstruct and throw in my own versions. This love of drawing is what landed me a job at Hallmark Cards who was hiring artists who were very detail-oriented to train to become Artistic Engravers, interpreting 2-dimensional art and carving it into metal plates 3 dimensionally for embossing their greeting cards and the likes. It wasn’t five years into my journey here that my partying gave me an early exit and I landed at a company of Ex-Hallmarkers and I continued on to become a Master Engraver carving out the designs in book covers, government seals, any and everything for the next 40+ years.

In 2002 when I sobered up, I saw that robotics were slowly taking a hold in the engraving industry and looked to my painting not just as a way to maintain my sobriety but as a fallback for when the bottom fell out of hand sculpting metal. In 2011 as I was rehabilitating from a tennis injury, I took the course at the Kansas City Art Institute on Plein Air painting, and here my passion and my career in painting took off.

Tired of the precision needed for carving in metal, standing outdoors in the elements with a brush and paints was very freeing, and I loved the impressionistic style that came with painting out of doors. It was this artistic style that I gravitated to in my trips to the Nelson Art Gallery, the looseness and freshness of the strokes, and the color. The color was all over the place, but then when looking outdoors and observing subjects in real life, these colors were all there. I mean Monet and Cezanne might have exaggerated a bit, but still, the colors of the rainbow were there if you looked hard and long enough.

So I began my journey into painting on location across the US and the World.

Jeff Sparks who helped me with the Missouri Valley Impressionist Society knew of an artist in Southern Colorado, a Rick Howell who might take us under his wing teaching us some of the ins and outs of painting outdoors. So after contacting and submitting resume and portfolio, Rick began his mentorship of us, taking away our paints and putting only four tubes of color on our palette and making us go from there. An Ultramarine Blue, Alizarine Crimson, Cadmium Red Light, and Cadmium Yellow Light. With these colors, we began painting the land as we found it. Painting fast and free, spending only 2-3 hours before moving on to another location and beginning again. I studied under Rick until his untimely death in the fall of 2012.

Then I began going out on my own taking in competitions across the land and painting with the big boys. A circuit of professional artists that travel across the nation taking part in plein air events, painting in the cities who host these events, staying in lodging supplied by the sponsoring companies or families for a chance to for awards and sales. I found I did well at these types of painting competitions with my limited palette of 4 colors.

Painting on location has its own problems inherent to land. One would think that painting a mountain before you that it would hold still, or a boat moored in the harbor, but the light changes by the minute, the tide of the ocean comes and goes, one time you see something, the next moment it’s gone. Weather changes, animals, insects, people, it’s all there affecting everything you do outdoors. It is very challenging and oh so rewarding when it works.

I have hauled my equipment painting along the Inca Trail in Peru, along the Great Ocean Road in Australia, hiked the coast of France and Spain along the Mediterranean painting along the way.

I have won Best of Show in numerous events across the country in both plein air and studio competitions, along with every other award possible, but what stands out to me and what I am most proud of is helping others along the way. Helping them see and experience the thrill of painting outdoors.

In West Texas at a painting event, a young child with Down Syndrome was amazed at what I was doing, and after getting permission from their Grandparents who she was there with, I let her paint on my painting. The look in her face when she mixed two colors together and coming up with green was to die for. There is little on earth more gratifying to me than the pure delight in a child’s eyes.

Adults, teens, it doesn’t really matter, I enjoy the interaction of painting outdoors and teaching others. I horse around a lot out there, I’m somewhat of a practical joker out there, but always meaning well. I have been called “irreverent but not offensive”, and I can live with that. My life has been filled with too much, and to maintain a calm and peace humor and painting makes it possible.

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
I am happiest when I am creating something. It does not always have to be painting or drawing. I enjoy working with my hands in most any way shape or form. Cooking, building, gardening, any and everything. 

But there is a point that every good artist knows, and maybe everyone, but it’s when they get into that “zone” when doing something and all things outside of your focus is irrelevant. While painting, it is that creation process, making something from nothing, making beauty out of chaos, finding peace in a violent world. This is where I go when I paint.

Painting makes me happiest, no matter the mood, it always takes me away. Whether I’m happy or sad, joyful or mad, it is my transcendental meditation on a brush.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.rgregorysummers.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rgregorysummers
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rgregorysummers
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/grgry1957
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9PDZcdkbaVvm_OOUhhEvMA