By Heather Lusk
Artist Lois Main Templeton received some advice before she entered art school at the age of 50.
“Our son, John, in his senior year of college reassured me, ‘You don’t have to be able to paint. You just have to work hard. It is 80 percent hard work,’” Templeton said. “That was all I needed. I knew how to work hard.”
Forty years later, Templeton, 90, has her most recent art on display in Zionsville following a special exhibit at the Indiana State Museum.
“Lois at 90: Recent work by Lois Main Templeton” will run through Oct. 27 at SullivanMunce Cultural Center.
The free exhibit shows that her new work incorporates a sense of space.
“Do you notice how airy my present work is becoming? Even (in) spite of patches of considerable energy?” she said. “This, I think, is the contribution of old age.”
Templeton has described herself as an action painter, a style in which paint is spontaneously applied to canvas.
Templeton graduated magna cum laude from the Heron School of Art in Indianapolis, but it wasn’t a simple path.
“Painting did not come naturally to me,” she said.
Templeton took several art classes while living in California. After moving to Indianapolis with her family, she decided to enter art school.
After graduation, Templeton was among the early artists to occupy the Faris Building in downtown Indianapolis. She now resides in Maine, where she continues to paint, but many of the walls of her home remain as blank as sections of her latest art.
“I now savor large, open, empty spaces,” she said.
