UPDATED: This show has been extended through Fri., Aug. 30.
When I saw that the Morean is hosting a paint by numbers pop-up this summer, I had some questions, like:
Can anyone do one?
Does it come with paint?
Will writing an article on paint by numbers ruin my street cred?
The first question went to the Morean’s Director of Photography Beth Reynolds, who suggested the show. Reynolds has been doing paint by numbers all her life. She found her first paint by number at an old-fashioned drug store around the corner from her house. She was about eight years old.
“My mother was an artist,” says Reynolds, “So we always had art in the family. My brother drew very well. He was very accomplished and did these beautiful models and painted miniatures, and I didn’t have much of a skill set in that area. Paint by numbers just looked like, ‘well, I can do this.’ It tells you exactly what to do, and you come out with a piece of art. You didn’t have to start with a blank canvas.”
Reynolds hatched the idea for a paint by number show after hearing about Dan Robbins passing this year. Robbins invented the first paint by numbers at a paint factory in Detroit in 1950. These early kits once cost about $2.50. At their peak, during the early '50s, Americans were buying up about $20-80 million worth a year.
As much as hobbyists and amateur painters loved the kits, cultural critics hated them. “When paint by numbers arrived as a popular pastime in the early Fifties, it opened a cultural fissure that has never closed,” wrote historian Spencer Crew, “The hobby, like its paintings, raises curious eyebrows even today.”
The Morean’s upcoming paint by number show is already raising some “curious eyebrows” across Tampa Bay.
“At first, people thought it was a joke,” Reynolds says. “Once they realized it wasn’t a joke, then they thought they were supposed to turn a piece of their artwork into a paint by number. We had to be very specific about, ‘No. Go buy a kit.’ And they said, ‘What? They still make the kits?’ And I said ‘Yes. They still make the kits.’”
This time, I was among the curious and confused. Reynolds suggested I pick up a kit. In 2019, you don’t just stumble upon paint by number kits in Macy’s or your local drug store. You have to actively seek them out at designated arts & crafts stores like Michaels or JOANN.
JOANN had about a dozen paint by number kits to choose from; all were made by Dimensions Paint Works. They depict landscapes, seascapes, dogs, birds and flowers. I selected a William Vanderdasson painting of three birds on a fence surrounded by hollyhocks. The kit was made in Taiwan and cost about $15.
Once home, I enthusiastically cracked open the box and poured out its contents. Out came 12 cups of paint, a small paintbrush, a sheet of instructions, and an 11 x 14 inch piece of white cardboard with the grey outline of Vanderdasson’s painting, divided up into about a thousand numbered sections.
Scattered amongst the numbered sections were lettered sections. A key on the instruction sheet told me which colors I needed to mix for each letter. It’s a good thing I opened the box when I did. This was going to take a while.
As I dipped my paintbrush into a cup of red paint and began painting flowers, I started thinking of all the other things I should be doing. About 10 minutes in, these concerns melted away, replaced by a new feeling. As I twisted my wrist into awkward contortions, trying to conform to another artist’s brush strokes, I yearned for the freedom only a blank canvas can provide. This was… unexpected. I haven’t painted an original since college.
I continued with my paint by number (It’s going to be in the Morean’s Paint by Numbers Pop Up). I also enrolled in an art class at the Dunedin Fine Art Center, where I would soon be painting freehand waterscapes with local artist Nathan Beard. But my experience is not everyone’s experience. Some people both start and end with a paint by number, and that’s OK.
“People call us all the time and say, ‘well, I can’t draw a straight line’ or ‘I can’t even draw a stick figure.’ We get that a lot when people are trying to figure out what class to take,” says Reynolds. “And we are like, ‘just come and have fun. There’s no grades.’ And that’s what this paint by number is. It’s just purely fun. It’s remembering the kitsch of the '50s and childhood. And if it gets some kids and families together to paint and do something fun, then we have accomplished it.”
The show will feature paint by numbers completed by Morean staff, professional artists, kids and amateur artists. Curator of Exhibitions Amanda Cooper tells me it's an unjuried show. This means that anyone who completed a paint by number and turned it in on time gets their painting on the wall.
When I interviewed Reynolds for this story, the completed paint by numbers were already rolling into the Morean.
“Wait until you see Barry’s,” says Reynolds. She’s talking about Barry Goodman, who teaches printmaking at the Morean. “He took this beautiful landscape painting with a cottage, a seaside and everything. And the cottage is fully engulfed in flames. There’s a boat out in the ocean that has broken in half and it’s sinking — it kind of looks like the Titanic. It’s just mayhem through the entire thing.”
“Some artists have really gone and done either embellishing on their paintings or created these diptychs,” says Reynolds. “Some people did extra painting on theirs and turned it into something else. People are getting really creative as we’re getting the work in. So I think that’s fabulous.”
Paint by Numbers Pop Up | The Morean Arts Center, 719 Central Ave., St. Petersburg | July 8-28; Opening reception Sat., July 13 during St. Pete ArtWalk | 727-822-7872 | www.moreanartscenter.org
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This article appears in Jul 4-11, 2019.