Puppy Provides Artistic Inspiration to Her Master

CEDAR RAPIDS - An artist's inspiration sometimes blossoms at the strangest times for the strangest reasons. Just ask Kelsey Bryan as she feathers paint onto a cherry blossom of the 10-by-16-foot mural of a Vincent Van Gogh classic she's recreating on the back of her northeast Cedar Rapids home.

"My dog chewed up one of my Van Gogh books," Kelsey laughs. "That inspired me."

Yes, of all potential chew toys, Eleanor, a mischievous black 8-month-old labradoodle, dug into Kelsey's art collection.

"I'd been thinking, what is my new body of working going to look like?" Kelsey says. "It's like she pawed through these and picked out the ones she wanted."

Eleanor dog-eared several prints in Van Gogh's cherry blossom series.

"He painted a lot of landscapes," Kelsey says. "He felt a special relationship with the land, with nature, with the colors."

As a young artist who is constantly learning, Kelsey, 31, pays special attention to climbing into the creative minds of her favorite masters.

Van Gogh, of course, is known to have faced many physical and mental challenges. He sliced off part of his ear a couple of years before his death at age 37 as the result of a gunshot widely believed to have been self-inflicted. Yet, he created more than 2,100 works of art from self-portraits to sunflowers, from wheat fields to fruit orchards.

"It has to be a personal process," Kelsey says. "If somebody enjoys it, that's fine. If they don't, that's OK, too."

The old 1888 house she shares with her significant other, Sean Turner, is full of art they've each created, including her larger-than-life portrait of the Dalai Lama in place of a headboard.

Preferring large-scale works over typical-sized canvasses - "They're too claustrophobic to me." - Kelsey has been interested in art as long as she can remember. And that can only be fueled by her life experiences - her father, Rusty Winegardner, died when she was 6; her stepfather, Scott Bryan, not only adopted her but took the family to China for a year when she was 9; her mother, Barb Bryan, is a retired teacher.

Since graduating from CR's Washington High School, Kelsey has earned degrees from Kirkwood Community College and Coe College. She's lived in Colorado and Las Vegas ("I really missed a rainy day out there."), took care of her grandmother after a heart attack and has enrolled at Mount Mercy University to become registered nurse.

For now, she tends bar evenings at the Lincoln Wine Bar in Mount Vernon and paints during the day, either commissions or for herself.

"I love working with oil paints but at this scale, not only would it be expensive, it would take forever to dry," she says, gazing at her cherry blossom landscape.

So, she uses latex house paint with added colorants, listens to her music - James Taylor, The Grateful Dead, Harry Nilsson - and contemplates whether she'll add texture and apply a sealant when she's done.

And, over yonder, from the shade under the patio table at the edge of the flower garden, Eleanor trains her puppy-dog eyes on her master and pants her approval.