Texarkana artist Danny Helms looks at his oil paintings and sees the words of Genesis inside the pastures, mountains, rivers and trees found there.
Specifically, a passage that describes God's creation of nature serves as inspiration for the artist, who rededicated himself to his art upon retirement: "And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit "
Helms now has a one-artist show up at the Regional Arts Center downtown. His work populates three floors. It's titled "The Third Day," and his art shows off a delighted felicity with nature's abundance and beauty, whether it's a cypress swamp, the Cossatot River's burbling waters, fog shrouding distant mountains, a collection of wild daisies or a row of trees that resemble a chorus line.
In his artist's statement, Helms writes, "I paint for the enjoyment and excitement of using what I believe is God's gift by taking a blank canvas or sheet of paper and allowing strokes, images and colors to come together."
Walking through the Arts Center and discussing these paintings with Helms, you can sense his reverence for the natural world and the spiritual hold it has on him. Many of his subjects are near Texarkana, too, so looking at these paintings brings a sense of familiarly with the landscape. Indeed, all of these paintings are landscapes, apart from one self-portrait.
Helms strives to create a feeling that you can walk into the painting, particularly with his larger works-"that they almost wrap around you, that you feel like you can step into them." That's his goal, he said.
When he was raising his children and tending to family duties, he stopped painting for a while, but in recent years he's devoted himself to the art.
"Once I had the time to get back into it, I just thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy it," said Helms, an Arkansas native and graduate of Arkansas State University with a degree in fine art. This is his first big show. He had a small show at the Downtown Gallery on Broad Street called "Three Feet of Arkansas."
Long before that, in grade school, he was first inspired by art. "A guy would come to school with a newsprint pad and piece of charcoal and would create these characters and drawings," Helms recalled. "And I thought it was magic."
That did it for him, so he started doodling. When he got to college, he finally learned from formal training. "When I retired, started painting with a fever," he said. He dabbled in watercolor, but the oils, they lured him back. He likes the ability to manipulate oils, the fact it doesn't dry quickly. But if you look at his paintings, you can see the watercolor influence, too.
One of the first paintings you'll see in the exhibit is titled "Dry Creek Bed." "Most of them are in Arkansas but this one is not. This one is in Beavers Bend, Okla.," he said. A hot summertime creek bed intrigued him by exposing the tree roots.
"Everything was green. It's really difficult to paint all greens because you have to really vary your values and your tones and your cool colors," Helms said.
Another nearby oil painting is similarly infused with greens of all sorts. Titled "Chaos," it depicts plant life with the vegetation going in all sorts of directions. "That one fascinated me," he said. In another painting, the different shades of bamboo colors interested him.
On the second floor, you'll find the painting "Standing on the Edge," which depicts a scene in Mena, Ark., where you're positioned with a view of a valley and distant mountains, somewhat shrouded far away. Usually, the painter photographs a scene and works from it later.
"I'm afraid of heights," he admits with a laugh. "I want you to be able to stand in front of it and feel like you'll need to jump off or take flight."
In paintings like this one, his words from the artist's statement make a lot of sense, Helms writing, "The patterns, lights and darks turn out to be somewhat realistic with impressionistic tendencies depending upon the subject, mood, idea or inspiration of the moment," he says.
To get a sense of the artist's natural inspirations, check out "The Third Day" at the RAC.
(Admission is free. The Regional Arts Center is located at 321 W. 4th St. in Texarkana, Texas. Open hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.)