Photo Potpourri: Visit to historic Coydon, Ind. Part IV: Linda Kay Shoults art exhibit

Monday, July 18, 2022

Visit to historic Coydon, Ind.
Part IV: Linda Kay Shoults art exhibit

I met Linda Kay Shoults once, in 2014, at Lee Ann's then-home in Fishers, Ind. At the time, Linda Kay was in town visiting her parents, who then were living in Fortville, Ind. She was with the man who had only recently become her significant other, Jim Hays. They met while both were living in Kansas, and they eventually returned to Indiana where both were raised as youths.

Jim's family had long owned a large number of acres on the southern fringes of Corydon, and after she checked out the digs there, Linda Kay decided it was a pretty good place to settle down if she were going to leave Kansas to return to Indiana. She wanted to come back to Indiana to be close to her parents, whose ages were in the 90s.

Linda Kay was a lifelong horse owner, and Jim's property in Corydon had plenty of room to care for horses and for Linda Kay to build a studio to indulge her artistic craft of painting on canvas.

She got to be quite successful in her art; her works were on display in sundry galleries in and around Louisville, which is not far from Corydon.

Lee Ann and Linda Kay grew up together in Henry County, Ind., which is east and slightly north of Indianapolis, and as youngsters, they came to be quite close. Over the years, they would check in with each other periodically -- more than just occasionally -- whether by text or old-fashioned person-to-person phone calls.

In 2009, Linda Kay learned that she had contracted a rare form of blood cancer, and in her roller-roller ride dealing with that in the years afterward, she made a point to keep Lee Ann posted on how things were going. Linda Kay was fortunate to experience long periods of remission.

After Lee Ann and I moved to North Carolina, it became a recurring goal of Lee Ann's to visit Linda Kay in Corydon, especially since our move coincided with one of the cancer recurrences. There were a couple of tentative dates set to make that trip, but something always came up to postpone it -- usually something on Linda Kay's end.

In the interim, Linda Kay integrated herself in the Harrison County Arts community and helped the organization find and move into a larger building in downtown Corydon to use for display galleries and art instruction. She made friends easily; her personality was such that people gravitated to her. Several arts center members mentioned that they never heard her say a bad word about anyone or anything.

2021 was a bad cancer recurrence year for Linda Kay. Though she continued to fight it, and she continued to work on her paintings through it all when she had the energy and drive, it started to sideline her in the late part of the year. At the same time, COVID-19 was proving to be a formidable obstacle for most health-conscious people who aspired to travel, and it admittedly kept us close to home.

In early January 2022, Lee Ann learned that Linda Kay's health was deteriorating fast, and on Jan. 15, she passed away. In the months that followed, Jim asked Lee Ann to find time to visit his farm so Lee Ann could go through Linda Kay's extensive collection of family photos. Jim decided to have a celebration of life service for Linda Kay the first weekend of June, but we'd already made reservations for accommodations that weekend for members of my family to meet in Myrtle Beach, S.C., for some R&R.

So instead, we drove out to Corydon 3 1/2 weeks later. We got there in time for the last days of the monthlong exhibit of Linda Kay's work at the arts center. Photos of those works in this post were taken during that visit. Almost all of the works you see were either from private collections or sold by the time the exhibit ended.

The photo leading off the post is a scene viewable from Jim's farm, looking toward the backyard of his sister's home next door. Before I ever reached the arts center and saw this painting, I had made a picture of the exact same scene the night we arrived at Jim's place. You'll see my picture version of the scene in images I'll present in the last post of this series.

Lee Ann's sister Lisa bought the one above.

Above: Another example of an unfinished work. Note the reflection does not have any eyes and is not signed.

Above: A large canvas work among the priciest on exhibit. It was right around $1,400.

Above: This scene, also from a place in Kansas, is from Jim's private collection. He says he feels this was her best ever.

Above: Jim told us this was a scene from someplace in Kansas she painted in her years living out there. It was a large canvas and, at $1,400+, it was the priciest available for sale in the exhibit.

Above: This rare (for Linda Kay) beach scene, which was on a smaller canvas, was one we purchased. Its title is "Some Beach Somewhere," taken from the Blake Shelton song. We were drawn to it not only because of our many beach excursions in the past few years, but also because we've assembled a beachside song playlist that includes that song by Shelton. Jim told us that Linda got the idea for the painting and title from a standard-bred horse by the name of Somebeachsomehwhere.

Above: Jim told us that this painting is a convergence of horses Linda Kay owned at various times in her life.

Above: The first painting on display in the exhibit that Lee Ann and I both said we would have wanted is this still life of sunflowers, but it was marked already purchased. We had recently visited the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit in Raleigh, where sunflowers were an integral part of the imagery.

The landscape above is a painting Linda Kay had started for us on a large canvas. It was something we had hope to hang above our couch in the living room. It was based on a photograph I'd taken of feral horses on Shackleford Banks, N.C., near the Outer Banks, in July 2014. Linda Kay didn't finish it however. It was missing horses and detail in the faces of the ones already on the canvas as well as detail in the foreground grass. However, she did finish -- and sign -- a small "study" version (a study is a small proportion version to help guide her with the much larger version). The study, which she painted from a separate shot I'd taken and given to her, is shown below.