Arlene Skutch, born Andersen and of Danish ancestry, grew up in Ohio but moved East to pursue a career in the Performing Arts. She could sing dance, and act. She was tall and blond.
After settling in Westport’ getting married and having two children, she chose to become a painter
She painted in oil and developed her own colorful style.
She lived in Westport in a “pink house” that later became the symbol for a group of painters that regularly attended Arlene’s painting classes, delivered in a dedicated large studio adjacent to the pink house.
Arlene was not only Ulla's art teacher but also a good friend, almost a second mother’ far away from Ulla's home in Sweden.
Despite some serious health issues caused by Type I Diabetes, Arlene was always optimistic and joyful. She was enthusiastic about her art, her teaching, and about living life. She organized exhibitions of her students and always helped them in any way she could. Eighty years old, she was still charming and beautiful.
A small selection of her paintings will be shown on this web site.
It may also be of interest how she was teaching newcomers to start painting in oil. Her 13 specific rules are attached below. However, they are worth far less without Arlene's personal guidance.
Arlene taught her students, the "Pink House Painters", the following 13 points:
- Decide what it is about the Subject of your painting that turns you on. Try to articulate it – perhaps even out loud! Your goal is to get that emotion in your painting.
- Use the "cardboard framer" to get an idea of the kind of composition you want.
- Block in dark and medium areas with charcoal on paper. Think big, narrow eyes to eliminate details.
- Do a contour drawing lovingly and slowly. Again use your paper well.
- Now check to see if your dark areas are united, not spotty.
- Decide whether your picture would look better on a vertical or horizontal canvas. On your sketch paper, place the borders of your composition where the edges of the canvas should be. As you do this, be sure the negative spaces are beautiful and varied in size and shape. The same holds true for square canvases.
- Do a very light contour charcoal sketch on the canvas to establish position and size. However, do NOT put in the dark areas with charcoal as you did in the sketch on paper.
- Either spray charcoal sketch with a fixative or ho over the lines with a small brush dipped in turpentine and raw sienna, or any other color you plan to use in the painting. Dark tones are more visible. This is an excellent time to correct your drawing if it needs it.
- Start putting color in the dark areas, using as large a brush as possible. In these dark areas you should try to make the more violent color changes.
- 10. Now is another good time to step back from your painting to see if you have been able to unite the dark areas in interesting forms.
- Now, put in medium tones. In this step try to make more subtle color changes, mixing some of the neighboring medium tones to color to be applied to help the relationships, IF the opportunity to do so seems right.
- Work on the lightest areas where the color changes should be the most subtle. Again, some use of the neighboring color in mixing helps the eye to move from one area to another more easily. (Of course, all of the above rules are made to be broken. Just use them as general guides.)
- Step back at least five feet after any major work is done tosee if it carries.
Sometimes what looks great up close, refuses to do so at a distance. Usually, after the painting has dried, "punching up" the very lightest areas gives it that final sparkle!
