By Paul M. Howey
Asheville-based artist Cheri Brackett says of her paintings, “They tell stories—not just one. I may have one that I start with, one that I think it’s going to be about; and by the end it’s saying something completely different. And then you might come along and see a different story altogether, or attach a feeling or meaning that I never would have thought of.”
Such is the case with this month’s cover painting. “What’s the story here?” asks Cheri. “Is it a first kiss? A goodbye kiss? A stolen kiss? Maybe a forbidden kiss? Who are they? Where are they and what era are they living in? It all depends on your perspective. I’ve heard at least ten different stories of what’s going on in this painting. And they’re all true!”
Cheri was born in Utica, New York, but grew up in the South, first in Florida and later Georgia. Her first artistic endeavors, she recalls, were done while she sat with her brother and sister in the backseat of the family car. She’d draw pictures of her father interacting with other drivers. “I’d pass them up to the front where I’d hear my parents chuckle. I think my father tempered his driving habits when he saw himself.”
Although she won “Architect of the Year” in her high school’s drafting and architectural design course (she designed an A-frame with a stream running through it), her careers have often gone far afield of art.
“In my late teens and early twenties, I explored almost as many jobs as colors on my paintings,” says Cheri. She’s worked in the service industry, was an apprentice for the insulators union in Atlanta, spent time with a recruiting firm, an advertising agency, and two travel companies.
At that last company, she was the manager of a $40 million national account. But it was a job that left her wanting something more.
She decided to move more in the direction of her college studies (she has an undergraduate degree in behavioral science and a graduate degree in counseling psychology).
“Before my year-end bonus, I resigned and took a job as a case manager at a therapeutic foster agency, getting less than half my salary.” She worked with kids she says had been in more foster homes than their ages. “If they couldn’t make it here, they probably weren’t going to make it at all,” she says.
“I’d often sketch them and then show them what I saw. It became a doorway to helping them understand things about themselves—mostly how strong and valiant they were through some of the most horrendous circumstances imaginable.”
When she was 26, she wrote a book that ended up in the hands of a man in Philadelphia who would become her husband. “(Tom) read it and a few weeks later, came to Atlanta to meet me. A year later, we were married.” He was a Baptist minister at the time and, in 2001, was ordained an Episcopal priest.
Cheri’s life was about to take another turn. “In 2003, I took a painting class as the John C. Campbell Folk School. Prior to that, I’d never really painted other than dabbling a bit in watercolors.This class was anything but dabbling. I like to describe my first and only teacher, Patt Odom, as a mad woman—mad with passion for what she does so masterfully.
“I didn’t just use acrylic paint with brushes. I used rags, spackling knives, rollers, gesso, and of course my own hands and fingers. And once I even used my toes. I’d have everything all over me by the end of the day. And Patt would let everyone know that I was the messiest painter she’d ever seen. I took that as a compliment…”
Cheri has a family psychotherapy practice in Asheville and a studio in her home. She’s been in private practice for more than 20 years, and it was at her office that she sold her first painting.
“I’d hung several paintings in my business, and one day when I walked into the reception area, the person sitting there asked me who the artist was.” When Cheri said that she was, the person immediately purchased the painting. “We both walked away with something new. She a painting, and I with a check made out in my name. But more than that, it was a realization that my painting may not just be for me.”
She mostly paints the human figure, although she occasionally paints trees and horses. “To me, all of these images are about how our inner world relates to the outer world—our perspectives and emotions and relationships, and how we locate ourselves in the middle of all that.
You can see Cheri’s paintings at Charles Bradsher Art + Design in Asheville, at Mountain Area Health Education Center Education Center through May 1, online at cheribrackett.com, and at her studio by appointment. You can reach the artist via email at cheribrackett@gmail.com. (Photo of the artist by Paul M. Howey)
