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Local painter has work on display in the governor’s office and home

“Brown’s Hill Dolmen,” an oil painting by Ed Charney.

"South Vienna Tower," a 6-foot-tall oil painting by local painter Ed Charney, is on display in Gov. John Kasich's office.

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Ed Charney, a local painter and a professor of art at Wittenberg University, has paintings on prominent display in Columbus: one in the governor’s office, one in the governor’s residence and one at the Ohio Supreme Court.

MARSHALL GORBY Ed Charney, a local painter and a professor of art at Wittenberg University, has paintings on prominent display in Columbus: one in the governor’s office, one in the governor’s residence and one at the Ohio Supreme Court.

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer 5:56 PM Thursday, September 29, 2011

SPRINGFIELD — The longer Ed Charney talks about painting for hours or meticulously crafting jewelry from sterling silver, the more he becomes the envy of those of us who can’t quit checking Facebook or waiting for the next text.

The more he describes a carefree upbringing in which he did woodcarving and woodburning to keep busy, the more he seems to be the practitioner of some ancient, mythological skill, like a ninja in feudal Japan who was said to be able to snatch a man’s eyeball right out of its socket.

Simply put, Charney’s gift of concentration puts him at odds with the modern world.

At only 54, the local painter and associate professor of art at Wittenberg University might very well be the last of a breed that dates to Da Vinci.

“I had to tell a student in a painting class this week that, ‘You have to put your cell phone away,’ ” Charney explained recently. “ ‘It’s not turned on,’ they said. Then why do you have to have it in your hand?”

He’s quick to note that he’s not trying to insult the students he loves to teach, but there’s no denying reality, either.

“Attention spans aren’t what they used to be,” he observed.

“We have so many things we can put our attention to simultaneously.

“It could end up impacting the art world in ways we don’t know. We can’t say it’s better or worse. Just different.”

His own landscape paintings are the product of not only intense concentration, but another endangered practice as well — the ability to be entranced by the natural world.

While you were trying to figure out the new Facebook news feed, Charney was trying to figure out how best to depict the texture of the clouds above his home and studio near Donnelsville.

He loves the colors of nature.

Seasonal changes in particular.

Sunrises and sunsets, too.

“Trite things like that,” he said almost apologetically, “are still interesting to me.”

It turns out they’re interesting, too, to those in the state who lay down the laws of the land.

Charney’s landscapes are now on display in several high-profile locations in Columbus.

A 6-foot-tall painting of the South Vienna water tower done in 2009 is on display in the governor’s office.

And a painting done the same year of a Clark County soybean field is hanging right above the fireplace in the governor’s residence in Bexley.

A print of the same painting also will hang in the new Springfield Regional Medical Center when it opens in November.

Chosen from a recent call for entries for art to adorn the governor’s office and residence, Charney’s paintings are on loan until next summer.

“I wish they’d buy them,” he remarked. “They don’t borrow the carpet, but they think it’s OK to borrow the art.”

Fortunately, the Ohio Supreme Court did, in fact, purchase the Charney landscape — one inspired by an area near Plain City — that it has on display in a seventh-floor office.

A Wittenberg art professor since 2000, Charney has devoted the past 15 years to painting landscapes.

In that time, more than two dozen paintings alone have captured the strange beauty of dolmens — prehistoric, Stonehenge-like monuments that he first witnessed on a university-sponsored painting trip to Ireland in 2004.

“I thought they were too exciting not to work with,” he said.

“They’re man-made, but their purpose isn’t known.”

A native of small-town Ford City, Pa., Charney was fortunate enough to grow up with a dad who dabbled in painting landscapes himself.

His father was fortunate enough to retire after 41 years from Pittsburgh Plate Glass before the factory closed.

“I did lots of paint-by-numbers before I got into paint with no numbers,” Charney joked.

As a Boy Scout, he took up what seemed like countless projects, from painting to carving to ceramics.

“It gave me tangible evidence of how I used my time,” he said. “You get addicted to that.”

An initial interest in making jewelry made Charney part of a centuries-old tradition.

“In the Renaissance,” he said, “Da Vinci, Michelangelo and many of those we know as Renaissance men were trained as silversmiths.”

That training, he explained, develops a level of concentration needed for painting.

While he also teaches silver jewelry at Witt — a required course, interestingly enough, for all predental majors — Charney identifies himself as a painter.

And even though they’re just on loan, he’s happy to have multiple works on display so close to the governor.

“It’s great exposure,” he said.

“And maybe one day, Gov. Kasich will want to own one because he got so attached to it.”

Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.

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