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Finally got to join artists network. As much as I like collecting artwork I love visting forums to get to know more about the various forms. Though I took the survey but what differentiates my opinion is that I went love Nandita Albright’s Contemporary Artwork and it amazed me to roots after I visited her gallery, and I couldn’t have wished for more.
So glad you are here, Liz!
Well now I have found you whoever and whatever you are. A place to bathe my eyes in the delight of light and curiosity of creation. Joy.
Emailing you directly about this, Karen. All best and talk soon.
I recently subscribed to unlimited access to your site, however, I still haven’t been able to access it! I’m so frustrated with your new site. Your old site was easy to navigate and I had no trouble whatsoever. I called many times and no one has been able to help me get on the site! I really want to see the videos and I’m unable to. I’ve tried my iPad and also my iMac . I’m totally frustrated!
The Artist James L. R. Payne, Sr.
And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands establish thou it. Psalms 90:17
I was born February 25, 1934 in Iola a small town in southeast Kansas and my parents were Delmar Emerson Payne and Lenore Verone Leigh. They were married January 1, 1933 at the beginning of what was called the great depression and a decade of mixed blessing. The population was approximately 123 million with 53 million on farms, The unemployment was creeping toward 25% of the labor force. Although times were
tough my dad was still able to find work but had to leave his family and go wherever the job was. But on one of those trips and while at a boarding house the couple that owned the boarding house had a daughter that as the story goes, told my dad that she would be glad to keep him company at night. The next day my dad came home and bought our first trailer. Mom said it was home-made and cost $400 and she said they thought they would never get it paid off. Dad was determined that we would stay together as a family and so we hit the road. Our theme became “On the Road Again.” Me and my siblings and I had two younger brothers, Jack Emerson and Delmar Lloyd and a sister, Janet Lucille and, according to my mother, went to some sixteen schools in Kansas, South Dakota, Washington and California. And we lived everywhere in between. In 1943 we were in a make shift trailer camp near the west end of the Pasco-Kennewick bridge in the state of Washington. A picture of the camp along with a bunch of us kids and our mothers was part of an article in a Spokane newspaper about the influx of people into the area because of the war .

Later my dad got on at the Hanford Engineer Works in Hanford, Washington and we moved into a trailer village there of 12,000. Hanford in 1942 had a population of 200 but by the end of 1944 there was 50,000. Over 80.000 worked on the project, as it turned out was an atomic bomb plant but only about 100 knew what the project was all about. The tar-paper city that was Hanford was bull dozed after the project was finished and out of Hanford came two bombs that ended the war. When the war ended we were at Vancouver, Washington where my dad was at Kaiser Ship Yards helping to build what was called liberty ships. Much needed cargo ships during the war. After the war we continued to move from place to place, Kansas, Wyoming and California. My dad eventually went to work with Bechtel Construction building power plants in California and Arizona over the next 25 years. He then retired and they moved to Oregon.
In 1952 while still in high school in Iola I joined the Kansas National Guard just to make some extra money. But between my Junior and senior year we moved again back to California where I started my Senior year at Adolf Lutzinger High School in Lawndale, California, but decided to go back and finish where I started in Iola so stayed with my grandparents and an Aunt who was a junior. After graduation our class president Lynn Goodnight and my Aunt, Nancy Joann were married and they left for Michigan. I went back to California where I started to work for Douglas Aircraft in Torrance and my brother and I then joined the California National Guard. But, I soon found out I was about to be drafted back in Kansas so joined the Army in February of 1954 and my brother joined in March and we had a cousin join in January. We were all at Fort Ord, California. My brother and I both ended up in Germany and our cousin went to Korea and Hawaii. My brother went straight to Germany but because I had volunteered for the 82nd Airborne I was briefly at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. I then went to Fort Huachuca, Arizona and into a signal company and it was there I did some art work on our mail room. It was some time after that that that my job title or MOS was changed to operations draftsman and I was a part of an operations and training section. I then transferred to Germany to an armored signal company of the Second Armored Division. Again I was an operations draftsman in an operations and training section. I had been involved with art from an early age and as an operations draftsman it gave me a chance to do some art work. My brother and I also got to spend some time in Holland and Italy while both stationed in Germany. After my brother returned to the states I spent ten more days in London and Paris.

Paris 1956
When my enlistment was up I began to attend El Camino Collage a community college in southern California. and graduated in 1959 with a degree in both commercial and fine arts. It was at this time I met my wife. The pastor of my Baptist church had a younger sister graduating from Culter Academy in Los Angles and had a friend that needed an escort to their senior banquet. When I took this friend home after the banquet she had a friend staying with her by the name of Helen Wasmer. Helen and I now have been married for over 58 years. After we were married we began to attend Helen’s church, Bethel Assemblies of God in Gardena California. While at Bethel we heard about a college back in Springfield, Missouri called Evangel. We then took a step of faith, loaded up our 54 VW and headed for Springfield. Evangel was a new school and had only one art teacher, Warren Stratton who expanded on what I had received at El Camino. Statton expanded on the techniques of the old masters. He was an accomplished painter, sculptor, architect and violin maker. He was the son of Rev. John Roach Stratton pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in New York City. In 1927 there was a prayer group in the church that had become Pentecostal. It created such a stir that the story made Time magazine and right in the middle of all this was one of the pastor’s sons, 19-year-old Warren. Warren was a talented artist when God filled him with the Holy Spirit and called him into the ministry. He was ordained by the Eastern District of the Assemblies of God in 1937. He pastured several churches in New York and New Jersey. In 1956 he joined the faculty at Evangel and established the fine arts department. As a youth he won honors in sculpture. Going abroad at 25 for further study, he was on the faculty of the American Academy in Rome. He made his own pigments for oil paintings. He also restored paintings and had one he had been working on in the department attributed to Raphael and was painted on wood. There was other works around the art department by Murillo, Jean Corot and Peter Paul Rubins, artist I had studied in nine hours of art history at El Camino. We were taught to work with an under painting. There are several ways to create an under painting but the three most popular are Verdaccio, Grisaille, and Bistre. Stratton taught us to create a brownish green monochromatic under-painting which I recently found is called Verdaccio. Helen is also an accomplished artist and over the past 50 years or so we have created most of our work using the Verdaccio method. Verdaccio was used in fresco painting where the color was used to define tonal values, creating monochromatic under paintings.

Florence, Italy 1956
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Under painting started with grisaille ( pronounced gree-say ) which was a technique that uses a full range of grays from white to black. The method has its roots in early Flemish painting. The Flemish masters Jan and Herbert van Eyck developed an approach to oil painting in layers. They started with a finely designed composition that was transferred and fixed to a painting panel. Then they executed a grisaille under painting as the first layer. This allowed them to finely model all the forms of the composition before concerning themselves with color. It was almost photographic in effect.
Once the grisaille technique became popular, the Old Masters realized the blacks used to mix the grays were to slow drying and they began substituting faster drying colors for the under painting, but they preserved the one color monochromatic approach-only adding white and black for tints, tones and shades. Some of the Old Masters included Albert Durer, Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Bruegel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens, El Greco, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jacques Louis David, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Edgar Degas and Edward Hopper.

The above Grande Odalisque is a grisaille under painting by Ingres.

The above Katy is a verdaccio under painting by James L Payne Sr.
For the glazes Stratton taught us to use ozinised egg tempera and damar varnish but have had problems lately with this. In the book “Portrait Painting Atelier” by Suzanne Brooker, it stated that a good all purpose glazing medium can be created by mixing 1 ounce dammar vanish, 1 ounce stand oil, and 5 ounces of pure gum turpentine.
In 1961 I went to work at what was then Lily-Tulip Cup Company as a commercial artist. I was with the company 36 years, I went back to Drury College at night and graduated in June 1968 with a degree in History. Through Evangel and Drury also completed studies toward a teaching certificate in 1971 in art and social studies.

The Art Department
It was July 25, 1968 that another chapter in our lives began when at a friends house in Springfield I was filled with the Holy Spirit. There was a young man and I never got his name but he had testimonies on tape of Catholics who had received the Holy Spirit. One Catholic sister who was a part of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana said she went to a home prayer meeting in the basement of a couples home there and was filled with the Holy Spirit. The next morning she realized God had also healed her. She had injured her back and had difficulty getting up a flight of stairs but when she realized she was healed she began to run up and down the stairs. I was given a book by Rev. Joe Jordon on how to receive the Holy Spirit and told I could take it home read it and receive or I could receive there and now. I choose to received it there and now and my friends son also received. On the morning of the 27th Helen received so we drove to Kansas City to the home of Helen’s mom and dad and a younger sister. We pulled out the book I was given read it that evening, prayed and early the next morning Helen’s sister received. On Labor Day weekend 1968 was the beginning of three miraculous weekends. On that Labor weekend we went first to Kansas City and then to Peculiar, Missouri where Helen’s younger brother lived and it was there that we saw her brother receive and an aunt from Des Moines, Iowa. The next weekend we were at North Kansas City where Helen’s brother Warren lived. We had another prayer meeting but Warren was struggling until his daughter Nina who was only seven climbed up into her father’s lap and began to pray in the Spirit and that was all it took. She climbed down and then began to pray for her three older brothers who all received. The children then began to pray with their grandfather and an uncle. Today Nina is an ordained Assemblies of God minister. The next weekend we went to St Charles, Missouri where Helen’s older brother Chester lived. But on the way there and when about 50 miles south on of St. Louis the windshield shattered. There were no other cars anywhere near us and the windshield was in a thousand pieces but stayed in. After we got close to St. Charles we stopped for gas and by that time the glare from all the lights made it necessary to poke a hole in the windshield. When I got back into the car and shut the door the windshield fell into our laps. So when we got to Chester’s there was no windshield. We had planed for another prayer meeting on Saturday but it did not happen. But it did at their church’s Sunday night service when her brother received. We had planed to return home Sunday afternoon but we had to stay over until we got our windshield on Monday. Over these three months we saw about 13 receive in Helens family and it did not stop there. At our church Calvary Temple Assemblies of God in Springfield, Missouri we saw a number of revivals with one lasting 10 weeks. I also found that there was a couple in South Bend, Indiana that had a prayer meeting in their basement where Catholics and others were being filled with Holy Spirit, and found they attended Calvary Temple Assemblies of God in South Bend. Helen became involved with Women’s Aglow and I was a part of Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship, International. At church Helen was also involved with a ministry for girls called the Missionetts and I worked with a ministry for boys called the Royal Rangers. The FGBMFI had several regional conventions and monthly meetings. In a 1971 convention the speakers included president and founder of the fellowship, Demos Shakatian, Father Dennis Bennett, rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, Washington and his wife Rita, Pat and Shirley Boone who packed out the Shrine Mosque in Springfield. Pat gave his testimony in the morning and Shirley that afternoon. After Shirley gave her testimony an invitation was given for those that wanted the infilling of the Holy Spirit to come foreword and close to 40 or more did. We led them downstairs where I as chaplain of the chapter had Father Bennett pray and after praying he left for St. James Episcopal Church where he was meeting with the youth. Most if not all that came foreword received the Holy Spirit. When Father Dennis Bennett left over 13 had been filled at St. James, including the rector Father Doug McGlenn. They began to meet on an off night and more were filled. The Spirit filled Catholics in Springfield met once a week at Sacred Heart Catholic Church and called their prayer group “The Light of the World Catholic Charismatic Prayer Community.” It cut across all denomination lines and someone said it was like a duck pond but all the ducks were fenced off. They were Baptist ducks, Methodist, Catholic, Episcopalian and even Pentecostal. But there came a great deluge and it began to pour down and soon the water began to rise and the fences all disappeared and the ducks all came together. In 1979 after attending an Episcopal Marriage Encounter weekend we also became involved with Episcopal Marriage Encounter and later Assemblies of God Marriage Encounter and served on the AGME National Board for six years. After I retired from Sweetheart Cup in 1998 I joined my wife at H & R Block doing taxes. Helen left Block after 30 years and I left with 16. I also was a substitute teacher with the Springfield Schools and a tour guide at Fantastic Caverns. We continue to paint and I have started a special project with a series of portraits of Abraham Lincoln. The first portrait was 50 years ago. In this journey though my hand may not be as study as it once was it has given me a chance to hone my skills somewhat. Something about Lincoln that I am sure about is that he had a special anointing. This brought out by Dr. Lance Wallnau. He was in a meeting with Trump in December 2015 with about 100 other evangelical leaders who said when the meeting broke up he went home feeling that there was some sort of anointing on him. It was later the Spirit reminded him that our president would be the 45th and he was impressed to read the 45th chapter of Isaiah which read, “Thus saith the Lord to Cyrus whom I have anointed.” God declared through Isaiah that a non-Jew would Sheppard God’s people and rebuild Jerusalem. Wallnau said, “The President falls into a unique category of individuals. These are men and women the hand of providence serves up.” They are people whose strengths match a certain test in history. Men like Churchill and Abraham Lincoln and there have been many others. I have no doubt that President Trump has that anointing and Abraham Lincoln after spending over a year painting numerous portraits of him, and researching the stories behind the photographs taken of him starting in 1847 when he was elected to Congress to 1865. He was someone with probably less than one year of formal education but who became one of the most successful lawyers in Illinois and then president. He said “If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet four inches, nearly: lean in flesh, weighing on average one hundred and eighty pounds, with dark completion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes-no other marks or brands recollected.” He said he was a slave himself as his father would hire him out to neighbors for three to ten cents a day. It was the Kansas-Nebraska Act authored by Stephen Douglas in 1854 that resurrected his political career. In his Peoria speech on October 16, 1854 he criticized popular sovereignty and why it could supersede the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise. Lincoln dismissed that climate and geography would keep slavery out of Kansas and Nebraska. Most importantly Lincoln attacked the morality of slavery itself. Lincoln argued that the slaves were people, not animals and consequently processed certain natural rights. He said, “The negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that all men are created equal and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another.” Soli Deo Gloria