Bayou Artist | Loretta Owens

article by STARLA GATSON
photography by KELLY MOORE CLARK

Loretta Owens heard life begins at 40. She wondered if the saying was true, but taking someone else’s word for it wasn’t good enough. Instead, she wanted to find out for herself. That’s how she ended up in M. Douglas Walton’s art class as a 40-year-old wife and mother — well, that and the fact that she respected his philosophy, she says, explaining, “I realized he had a rare ability to believe in someone until they could believe in themselves, and I was interested in that.” 

Owens met Walton in 1989 at a Ruston-Lincoln Chamber of Commerce event. Walton was the speaker, and Owens was fascinated by his words and artwork hanging on the walls. As luck would have it, Walton, who was a Louisiana Tech painting and architecture professor at the time, was seated next to Owens and her husband, presenting Owens with the perfect opportunity to strike up a conversation. She told him that she’d seen a show of his before, then candidly admitted she didn’t like the way she drew. That’s when Walton invited her to attend one of his classes.

“It was a figure drawing class,” she says, “and I thought he told me he could teach me to draw in an hour. But what he said was, ‘I’ll have you drawing in an hour.’ We were in the middle of the Tech library — at the time, the fifth floor was a gallery space — and it was empty except for the chairs and the space where the models would sit.”

That day, Walton had his students sketching on full-size pieces of watercolor paper with markers, no erasing allowed. If that wasn’t enough pressure, Owens recalls, the students only had 30 minutes to draw. 

“I knew I was doing something that wasn’t right,” she says. So, she started over. Then, she adds with a laugh, “It was exactly the same! I drew for about 15 of the 30 minutes, and I didn’t know what else to do. So, I just quit. I started watching the people on the sides of me.”

When time was up, and the rest of her peers were finished drawing, Walton had his class lay their drawings side-by-side on the floor for critiques. Just as she suspected, Owens’s work didn’t look like anyone else’s. 

“Mine were so different,” she says.

By the end of the class — it was a two-week summer session, as taking a full quarter’s worth of classes wasn’t feasible for the mother of four — Owens learned that her drawing differently wasn’t a bad thing. The belief that a person’s difference is their significance was one Walton shared with his students often. And by the end of the two-week class, Owens believed it, too.

Fast forward to now, more than three decades after Owens’s first class with Walton and well into her life as a full-time artist. “Different” remains an effective description of her work, and still, it’s not a bad thing. Primarily created with watercolor paint, much of the Ruston native’s work falls into the abstract and folk art categories. The images she creates are uniquely her own, showcasing the style that naturally flows from her fingertips.

“I just kind of [do] my own thing,” she says.

Whether you view it in person or online at her website, www.shadowartstudio.com, you’ll find that Owens’s work spans a variety of subjects. Events, both personal and universal, tend to inspire her to create, and she’s also inspired by things she has seen and statements she wants to make.

Take her Ruston Legends series, for instance. This is a collection of work Owens has been adding to for years, and it contains depictions of people in the Lincoln parish town that she has deemed legendary. There’s also her pandemic collection. This body of work, including paintings of toilet paper and political figures, documents the happenings of 2020 through her eyes.

Whether a part of a series or a standalone, all of Owens’s paintings are different and reflect her self-proclaimed “unusual style.” Rather than trying to put it in her own words, Owens uses a comment she once received from a Dallas-based artist to explain her artistic style, “She told me that both children and sophisticated art lovers would enjoy my art. The people in-between may not understand it, but don’t listen to them.”

Choosing to ignore the naysayers and own her individuality seems to have paid off for Owens, as she’s found a great deal of success as an artist. She’s shown her work in multiple venues, the first being Ruston’s Townsend House gift shop in 2001. A “kind of wacky” piece called Disco Mother-in-Law marked Owens’s first sale, and in the years since, there have been many more. A painting of hers was published in a teaching book produced by her former teacher, Walton, and in 2021, her art went viral on TikTok when her friend and business partner Amy Bernard posted a video to advertise Owens’s website. The public has embraced Owens’s “different” art with open arms, regularly setting out to add her original pieces to their collections.

“[Walton] told us the paintings ended up like your children,” she explains. “I didn’t know if I could sell them or not. But finally, I decided to allow my children to go and live somewhere else. It’s my hope that, when somebody encounters my work, they will feel joy. I consider it a compliment when somebody enjoys it enough [to buy it.]”

Owens is honored when she makes a sale, but that isn’t what it’s all about for her. She simply loves the process of creating and declares that she is blessed to be able to express herself through art. Sold or not, each piece Owens paints holds a place in her heart.

“Once you draw something, it becomes a part of you in a strange kind of way,” she says. “And when somebody wants a painting of themselves or their family, it feels like a way of me being a part of their family.”

It isn’t surprising that the 74-year-old is so passionate about creating. No, she didn’t take her first figure drawing class until she was 40, and her professional career didn’t kick off until later. But she was no stranger to making art before those events. 

As a child, Owens remembers drawing pictures on the kitchen chalkboard with her sister and completing art lessons while attending A.E. Phillips. In high school, she was president of the art club, and in adulthood, gained a reputation for assembling top-notch flower arrangements, mastering calligraphy, and creating commercial stitch art. She shares that painting was something she always planned to do — though, she admits, not exactly the kind she does now.

“I always said when I got old, I was going to paint china,” Owens says. “I don’t know if you know anything about china painting, but you paint the same thing and fire it. Then, you repaint it, fire it again, and [repeat the process.] I wouldn’t like to do that.”  Instead, life brought her the gift of watercolor painting, a “freeing and fun” medium that gives her space to let her own unique style shine through. Now, years after it ended, the key takeaway from Owens’s first class session with Walton continues to be true: one’s difference is their significance. Owens’s success with her delightfully different artwork is proof.