Painter stresses point of view in works, classes

Art is in Cheryl Fausel's bloodline. The 62-year-old retiree says people wonder why she creates and teaches art at such a steady pace, but she doesn't consider her full schedule to be work. "Art isn't a job," the Cape Coral resident says. "It's who you are. It's a sense of being. You can't retire from art."

BARBARA BOXLEITNER / FLORIDA WEEKLY Watercolorist Cheryl Fausel, who paints abstract realism, with "A Postcard From The Edge," at left, and "Vintage Music." Ms. Fausel is a third-generation artist. Her grandmother's and father's artwork are displayed on a bedroom wall, sentimental reminders to an upbringing in the craft. She recalls doing art when she was a toddler, and her interest has sustained since.

An illustration major when she was at Rochester Institute of Technology, she spent 10 years running a military arts and crafts facility in Germany. During her time in that capacity, she watched an art teacher instruct how to paint and decided she could do the same. "I taught myself how to teach it. I became really addicted to it," says Ms. Fausel, who soon after was teaching painting to the soldiers and their spouses.

Armed with additional training through attendance at workshops, during which she says she received national level instruction, Ms. Fausel has been teaching from her home studio the past three years. A National Watercolor Society associate member and Florida Watercolor Society signature member, she offers three-hour courses over four weeks in freestyle painting, advanced beginning watercolor and abstract mixed media. "My students have always been adults," she says.

She painted in oils for 25 years yet has painted in watercolor since 1987. Ms. Fausel splits time living in Florida and in Switzerland, where she can be near family. She paints here and there, sometimes transporting works in progress on the airline flights. Because of travel throughout the world, her artwork has an international presence.

She describes her painting style as abstract realism. "I love working in the abstract," she says. "It's not something that appeals to the wide majority of people."

Recreating an object exactly as is doesn't hold her interest, she says, which is why her take on an ordinary object assumes added dimension on canvas. "I like the challenge of something new," she says, "a point of view and sense of mystery. Those are the kinds of things that keep the viewer interested in the work."

That unique point of view is something she stresses to her students, most of whom come to her bearing a lifelong desire to be artists. Their formal training stopped when they were teens. They were discouraged by their families from pursuing art. "All their life they wished they could be artists," she says. "They start with me."

Ms. Fausel used to paint nature scenes and human forms, though it's hard to pinpoint a common subject in her work. "I feel my work can be in any environment," she says, noting that she doesn't paint Florida scenes. "I don't paint specific to any area."

She prefers to take a photograph of a scene or object — many images have been stored for years on her computer — and paint it with a twist. In her studio hangs a painting called "There's a Bug in My Glass." She had a photograph of a Volkswagen Bug stored on her computer as well as a photograph of a drinking glass she saw in a restaurant in Italy. The vertical painting features the glass portraying a reflection of the car, which appears in the background.

Actually, she does a lot with ordinary objects. She created a series of paintings about sneakers, incorporating into the works' titles variations of Converse, as in the shoe brand. One sneaker painting helped her get into a Florida Watercolor Society show and give her signature status, she says. Five of the sneaker paintings appear in the gallery on her online site www.cherylfausel. com. Another series is about doors.

She isn't hesitant to venture

from watercolor, either. She created a mixed media work on canvas of found objects. Her idea for the textured piece

originated from a bag that her husband discarded while tiling her studio floor. The work features the entire bag, some of it in pieces separate from the main torn part. She used acrylic paint to create a number of brightly colored cubes.

Ms. Fausel's paintings are mostly square, or rectangular, and often contain geometric images. She uses tape to create lines, squares or cubes that appear, which may be what viewers recognize in her pieces. "I do a lot of experimental work," she says. "People know my work. My signature is there, but I'm not always sure what it is."

Her work will be in the "Florida & All That Jazz" juried show Sunday, Feb. 14, through March 25 at Marco Island's Center for the Arts.