Fremont woman’s paintings displayed around the country

FREMONT – Bernadine Stetzel sat on the couch in her Victorian home, paints and brushes on the table in front of her and ready for her next painting, when the phone rang.

The caller was a woman who works for John Glenn, the former senator and astronaut, and she was calling to check in the 88-year-old artist.

One of Stetzel’s paintings is hanging in Glenn’s office, and visitors often tell her how much they like it, she told Stetzel.

The conversation clearly touched Stetzel, who has been longtime friends with Glenn and his wife, Annie. Her paintings — mostly primitives comparable to the style of painter Grandma Moses — hang in places around the country, including a museum in Dallas dedicated to President John. F. Kennedy.

“Sometimes I can’t believe it,” she said. “When most people look at my paintings, they say it makes them happy. I like that it makes them feel that way.”

Stetzel, a Tiffin native, started painting when she was 12 and planned to attend art school. Instead, she and her twin sister went to modeling school in New York, which Stetzel disliked because she was never a clotheshorse.

When she returned home, she met her husband, Fred, and got married and moved to Fremont.

The lack of professional training in painting never hurt her and instead may have helped her develop her style. Artists and art professors she has met over the years have told her she has a unique talent that shouldn’t be changed.

A teacher was the person who inspired her to develop her own style when she first started painting. One day during school, her class was painting, and the teacher stopped at her desk to give her some advice.

“She said: ‘Bernadine, I think you ought to do this with your picture,’” Stetzel said. “Then she stopped and so: ‘No, you do want you want. I can’t draw as well as you, so you do what you want.’”

Since then, she’s been painting what she wants.

“Painting didn’t mean anything to me at the time,” she said. “That’s kind of how teachers can influence children.”

Developing her talent

She started out painting in realism and painted some pictures of young girls from sewing pattern ads and still lifes of flowers from her garden. She kept that style for a few years, and then she discovered Grandma Moses and primitive style.

She used to make food and take it to one of her neighbors. One evening, she noticed a plate with a print of a Grandma Moses painting in his house, and she asked him what he liked about it.

“He said it was so peaceful,” she said. “That kind of stuck in my mind.”

She tried primitive painting and found that she enjoyed the style. Many of her prints focus on her childhood in Tiffin, from winter scenes at the mill to fall farming scenes, during the Great Depression era.

One of her paintings, “The Giftless Christmas,” showed one of her family’s Christmases during the Depression.

There were no presents, and the family couldn’t afford a Christmas tree. Her father borrowed an old artificial tree, and the family put together a nice dinner. She remembers it as a happy time, despite having so little.

“I really enjoyed my childhood,” she said. “There was so much harmony.”

Her paintings include the Mull Covered Bridge just south of Fremont, a fall scene that includes a cart with an ox, children ice-skating on a pond and a Christmas tree brightly decorated with presents beneath it. They provoke a nostalgic, comforting feeling, a feeling that takes people back to a simpler time.

Her paintings can be found throughout her historic home — which she used her artistic talent to decorate, from the gold curtains hanging in the long windows to the paint colors and refinished wooden floors.

Painting ‘what comes out’

Stetzel briefly tried painting portraits of people, but she didn’t enjoy it and quickly gave it up.

“It frustrated me,” she said. “I worried they wouldn’t like it or I wouldn’t get everything right.”

When she starts a painting, she usually sketches out the scene first, and the scene sort of develops as she paints.

“I’m happy with what comes out,” she said. “When I start doing a painting, I focus on the most important thing, like a covered bridge. I put the covered bridge in first.”

She loves painting the flowers that she grew from seeds in her garden. Winter scenes, though, are among her favorites, and she has several hung on the walls in her home.

“I’ve always liked snow,” she said. “I think snow is more beautiful than flowers. It’s so beautiful on the houses, so graceful looking.”

Stetzel sells her paintings for $275. She also has prints of 13 of her paintings, and the prints are $25 each.

Sharing her art with the world

When Stetzel talks about her art, there are three people she always thanks. Her mother, who would have enjoyed seeing her success; her husband, who didn’t want her to work and supported her painting career; and God, who gave her talent.

Her three children and extended family have continued that support. Her daughter, Elizabeth, is the co-author of her book “Remembering JFK,” which features paintings Stetzel created depicting President John F. Kennedy’s life.

Over 20 years, Stezel made more than 70 paintings of JFK’s life, and she donated them in 2011 to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.

The museum is on the sixth and seventh floor of a building in Dallas that in 1963 was the Texas School Book Depository. Lee Harvey Oswald sat in a perch on the sixth floor from which he allegedly assassinated Kennedy and wounded Texas Gov. John Connally.

Like many Americans, Stetzel remembers where she was and what she was doing — making lunch in the kitchen and listening to the radio — when she learned JFK had been assassinated. She and her husband, who was a former Fremont mayor, were Democrats, and she always felt drawn to JFK.

“He just had so much charisma,” she said.

Stetzel sent JFK’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, one of her books.

Stetzel also has published children’s books illustrated with her paintings and has been inspired to give some of them away.

She sent former First Lady Laura Bush a painting of her brothers and sisters around the kitchen table doing homework because she knew Bush was passionate about schools. Bush sent her a gracious letter in response.

Having her work displayed around the country and appreciated by so many people is humbling and sometimes surreal, she said. Although she is nearing 90, she feels decades younger mentally and has no intentions of slowing down her work.

“It’s very relaxing,” she said. “ I love to create.

“If I don’t paint every day, I feel my day is incomplete. I feel like I’ve wasted it.”

mksmith@gannett.com

419-334-1044

Twitter: @kristinasmithNM