BY Holmen Courier

Connie Long is a study in duality, opposites and dichotomy. “That’s the story of my life,” the 61-year-old artist claimed. “Opposites, dichotomies, split personality. I’m all over the place.”

Take where she lives for example. She lives in the Innsbruck area of the town of Onalaska but the mailing address is West Salem. She’s also lived in Japan and has traveled across the country with her husband as he fulfilled his U.S. Navy duties.

Watching her paint is a study in extremes. She seems to be at once placid and mercurial, patient and frenetic. While one expects her, in her exuberance, to take the gallon of paint from her worktable and just throw it on the wall for a big splash, Long grabs a small paintbrush and proceeds to work in intricate detail.

That split personality is reflected in her artwork and manifests itself through the subject matters and medium she chooses. “My artwork is very colorful,” she laughs. “But my home is all neutral tones. I like excitement in small doses, but really punchy.”

Giving her art that punch, Long strives to create art that is as realistic and contains the same level of detail as the original subject. She wants to have her art portray something so real that it reaches out from the canvas and makes the viewer want to grab it.

One thing viewers won’t find in Long’s artwork is fantasy. She’s very much a realist, and attempts at fairies, unicorns, monsters or anything remotely unreal do not find their way into her paintings.

For her November show at West Salem’s Marie W. Heider Center for the Arts, Long set a goal for herself to focus on abstract paintings, to move into the world of uncertainty. It’s been somewhat painful for her, though. “With abstract, you have to learn to give up control over the medium. ... And I’m into control,” she said with a laugh.

Long is disappointed the 16 abstract paintings she prepared for the Heider Center show did not turn out — because of the need to control. “I had some nice pieces, but I overworked them,” she said. “It’s because I want all the details right. I have to learn when to let go.”

For that reason, Long enjoys most media — acrylics, oils, pastels, pencils, charcoal, sculpture and paper. Anything but watercolor: She’d have to work too fast, and, she’d have to give up the control over the medium.

It doesn’t matter what she’s painting or creating. She just enjoys the process. “I’ll paint anything,” she said.

Right now, Long is painting murals on the walls of the children’s activity rooms at the building the La Crosse Unitarian Universalist Church recently purchased and is remodeling.

“This is my contribution to the fellowship,” she said. “The kids chose the subject matter — an underwater theme.”

She was introduced to doing murals when the La Crosse Children’s Museum opened up. She and another artist worked together to create the Mississippi River mural on the lower level. “I fell in love with working in big spaces. It was a refreshing change.”

Long had been working at her studio in her home. While she’s lived in the La Crosse area since 1973, she and her husband moved to the Innsbruck area of Onalaska/West Salem in 1991.

Even though she had been drawing all her life, Long didn’t start painting until 1998. “It just wasn’t convenient,” she said. “Life was happening.”

She gave birth to her son five weeks before she and her husband celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary.

Her first painting experience was growing up in southern Indiana with her father’s print shop he kept as a hobby. There was never a shortage of paper, pencils, crayons and paints around with which to dabble.

“He did hand lettering,” Long said. “He had those fine motor skills and attention to detail. I think that’s where I got it from — that attention to detail.”

While he had no formal training, Long said her father never taught her anything in a formal way, but he was willing to talk to her and answer questions and help if he could.

“I actually thought I would become a medical illustrator,” Long said. “I knew I was good at capturing detail and you certainly need that skill to replicate the human body.”

Long said she has always wanted art lessons. However, every time she’d join an art class or something like that in school, she would get pulled to help design sets for plays or make up posters for the high school. In college, they were focused on pop art and Long felt she was still missing the basics.

“That’s what I tell the children I talk to,” she said. “Learn the basics, the fundamentals when you’re young. Now I don’t have time to learn anything. Now I’m looking for someone to teach me the shortcuts.”

Shortcuts are not something she takes with her art, however. Long would rather work on something that isn’t going to fade fast, whether it is the subject or the medium. She said she doesn’t do flowers because by the time she’s really getting into the painting, the flower is wilting or fading. And watercolors dry too fast.

Long wants to labor over a piece, immerse herself in the process and the color and the act of recreating something.

Long brings to her art the very personality quirk she rues, a collection of dualities reminiscent of the chemical word dichroism — “the property of showing different colors depending on the thickness of the medium or the relative concentration of coloring matter in it.”

It’s not a matter of a split personality but of being blessed with many traits blending in perfect wholeness. For proof, don’t miss the piece “Lessons Well Learned.”

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