Jeana Vaughn’s Hobby
The Artist’s Eye
by Maryevelyn Jones
Fayettville Free Weekly
2002/3
As a struggling painter, I want to know what inspires people to purchase art and paintings. I found out how Jeana Vaughn started while I sketched her.
One day Jeana asked her friend John, an avid art collector: “How come you have so many beautiful things on your wall? I wish I had some.”
John told her that is just takes time. You have to continue to be diligent. Look for things that you can afford, but buy what you love. Shortly after this conversation Jeana and John came around different sides of a corner in a flea market.
“There on the floor was this beautiful painting and we immediately both started reaching for it,” Jeana said.
It was a 24” by 30” seascape from a hilltop point of view signed by S. Brenner.
“We both put our hands on it at the same time. I look at him. He looks at me, and I start moaning, ‘Oh, but John you have all this wonderful stuff. It’s my turn!’”
Then John let go of the painting. Jeana turned it over to discover a $30 price tag which upset John a little more.
Jeana has aquired several paintings and prints. “Everything I buy has to speak to me in some way,” she explained. “I’m hoping that whenever I pass on, someone looks at them and thinks this is something special. This is history.”
She’s especially fond of her 1865 sketch of three people about to get on a boat at Lake St. George called Summer Morning. “It’s astounding what people sell in their antique and flea markets.” This sketch evokes a curiosity in Jeana of what life was like for the artist in New York during the Civil War era.
All the art that Jeana buys evokes something: a place she visited, a woman that looks like her, an aged look, or something striking about the colors. “I have some sort of love for it, and so I bring it home.”
Jeana pays an average of $10 to $30. Ironically, her prints of paintings cost more than the original paintings she finds. Having been scoffed at for buying prints, Jeana said she couldn’t afford $2,700 for Christina Mariotti’s or Jeanett B’s original oil paintings. Jeanett’s large nude on a black background is worth that much, but the little giclee reproduction pleases Jeana. She knows the giclee is not the original, but she can afford it. “It’s just beautiful and looks great on my wall in my bedroom.” Jeana will tell you to think of every person you know who has a poster of Degas or Renoir, because museums own the originals.
Jeana’s advice to local artists: Don’t try to find what the masses want. Paint what comes from the heart, makes you happy, and expresses what you want to say. Then find someone else to market it. A buyer will see the love that you invest in each painting.
As for John who encouraged her to start collecting, he still comes over sometimes and stands in front the hillside seascape admiring it. “Sure is a beautiful painting,” he’ll say.