Retired Professor, Alumna Exhibit Artworks In LSC

Bearkats do not graze among the cows and horses in the paintings currently on display in the Lowman Student Center Art Gallery, but the featured artists are both Sam Houston alumni and longtime Huntsville residents whose range of subjects has both local and broad appeal.

Pam Markham and Barbara Tyson will display 30 paintings for their exhibit, “Interpreting the Light,” from July 26 to Aug. 8.

Markham's painting, "One Brief Moment"

Landscapes predominate, in which “light” clearly creates mood or drama, such as Markham’s banks of flowers amidst shadowed trees, or Tyson’s silhouetted lightpoles in a Huntsville sunset. Other images include a self-portrait, a café setting, a still-life, horsemen at a river bank and TDC horses in open pastures north of town.

Markham, who earned a degree in speech therapy and drama from SHSU, has made her art a major adjunct to her success as a local realtor with Markham Realty. She is widely admired as a colorist working primarily in pastels and has won numerous blue ribbons and a “Best in Show” in Lone Star Art Guild competitions.

Always busy with family and client calls, she still carves out time to paint “en plein air,” on location, and to attend out-of-state workshops coast to coast.

A few years ago, she turned from watercolors to pastels, a medium that has gained enormous popularity in the past decade.

“If pastels were edible,” Markham said, “I’d weigh 500 pounds. I love those sticks of color.”
In her home studio, she completes what was begun outdoors, and she often interprets “light” she has seen in her mind’s eye.

“Some day I hope to have more time to paint,” she said, “ but for now, I just paint for the joy it brings.”

After retiring in 2001 as an English professor at SHSU, Tyson returned to her joy of painting that was on hold for many years.

Tyson's oil painting, "Sienna Frieze"

Her show in the LSC Gallery a year ago, aptly titled “After Class,” featured large oil landscapes of Texas skies, as well as equine art and pastime art such as fishing lures and florals.

Along with Markham, Tyson has been an active member of Huntsville Cooperative of Working Artists and has exhibited in Lone Star Art Guild shows. She has won major awards, including “Best in Show” for “Shiro Rainy Day,” a palette-knife painting that will hang in this exhibit.

Her vision of a parade of white horses set against a maze of umbers and ochers steps away from tight representation.

“I titled this one ‘Sienna Frieze,’ because it suggests a panel set against a stucco surface, and perhaps architectural forms,” Tyson said. “Raw Sienna is the dominant hue, but maybe I had Italy in the back of my mind as well.”

Many Huntsville residents recall Tyson’s early paintings of wildlife on polished stones, and recently she has completed art work for community projects, such as a T-Shirt logo for the Tall Pines’ “Airing of the Quilts.’

“Many warned me about retirement,” she said, “that I would want to do it all. This is certainly true about my pleasure in art-- so much I want to do! But I’ll try to keep the studio painting my top priority.”

The two-week exhibition and sale is open to the public, with a reception to meet the artists on Thursday (Aug. 5) from 4-7 p.m.

The LSC Gallery is open Monday through Saturday. For gallery hours, call 936.294.4902.

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SHSU Media Contact: Jennifer Gauntt
July 21, 2004
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