For artists, inspiration can come in many forms: light shining through a tree canopy, a grandfather’s rough hand or some breakthrough that comes in a dream. Lesley Haflich found her latest inspiration close to home in Noblesville, where she has lived since 1991. She discovered it in our city’s women and in the stories they could tell, the impact they have made on our community. Bringing that inspiration to fruition, in October 2018, she welcomed the community into Nickel Plate Arts’ Stephenson House gallery for the debut of Noblesville Women, an exhibit of 30 beautiful portraits.
In 2017, when the idea for Noblesville Women began to coalesce, Haflich knew it wouldn’t be easy. Even though she has worked as a full-time artist since 2006, she is much more comfortable with still life and landscape subjects, or even abstracts. Nevertheless, Haflich began reaching out to women, asking them to allow her to paint them. “It’s not about you. It’s about the project,” she implored.
In February 2018, she applied the first strokes of oil paint to canvas to celebrate local arts advocate, minister and teacher Alys Caviness-Gober. During the eight subsequent months of painting, she met what she refers to as “just a sample of many, many women in Noblesville who are working hard to contribute to the wellbeing of the community.”
Some sat for her in her upstairs studio at Nickel Plate Arts, where the residue of Haflich’s artmaking is apparent. A striped apron is practically shellacked with paint, rubbed from wet fingertips. Pigment streaks scissor handles and tabletops. Mugs and pitchers of paintbrushes, erasers, markers and tubes of paint are scattered about. Other women submitted photographs to paint from. Haflich’s fellow Noblesville artists stopped by to offer opinions and guidance.
The women in the collection include city leaders and business owners, champions of social causes and fellow creatives. In real life, they represent a range of ages, skin tones, hair colors, face lines and experiences. On the gallery walls, the tightly hung collection illuminated the women’s similarities: beauty, strength and Haflich’s artistic approach.
“I wanted to do them in a style where the face was as realistic as I could get it, but as I got out from the face, I tried to loosen it up with more expressive brushstrokes with the hair, clothing and background,” she says. The paintings feature receding cool colors in the background, with darker backgrounds allowing faces to come forward, a technique used by Rembrandt and the old masters.
Learn more on her website.
Kara Hall is the Marketing and PR Manager for the City of Fishers and has been with the department since 2017. Her favorite thing to do in Fishers is checking out the local restaurants and boutiques around town and taking walks with her daughter, dog, and husband at parks #AroundFishers. Her other hobbies include listening to podcasts, watching true crime documentaries, going to concerts, reading, and cheering on the Colts on Sundays. She loves that Fishers is always changing and is constantly looking for ways to create vibrancy within the community.