Patrick Webb
A self portrait of Luana Stauffer as a teenager. She left Corvallis
for the East Coast to attend college.
‘Morning Moon’ by Luana Stauffer.
Continued from Page 8
I took an art class and got hooked. I had
wonderful professors who taught me to
use art as self expression rather than tech-
nique … technique comes along.”
‘Beauty’
Painting was relegated to a hobby while
Stauffer worked in advertising in San
Francisco. After 20 years, she was drained.
“I wanted to be done with it,” she said,
recalling her feelings in 1990. “I realized
I am not an urban person. I need to have
beauty around me.”
Landing in Waldport on the Oregon
Coast, her output burgeoned during the
next 10 years.
“My art was very well received there,”
she said.
Light is an artist’s oxygen; Stauffer
breathed deeply.
Stauffer created pastel landscapes,
which won contests and earned shows
at the Coos Art Museum and the Oregon
governor’s office.
“I am attracted to sunrises and sunsets.
That’s the times when light is most inter-
esting and evocative,” Stauffer said.
‘Intuitive’
As the ‘90s ended, the big island of
Hawaii beckoned.
“I found this inner need to go there
and ‘find myself.’ I was in my early 50s,”
Stauffer said.
A cedar cabin overlooking the Pacific
Ocean on the more affordable east side,
with a thermally heated swimming lagoon
15 minutes away, provided paradise.
Around this time, Stauffer began mak-
ing oil paintings.
“It was years of paintings — all intui-
tive, none were planned. This was a magi-
cal time for me,” she said.
“The Swimmer,” displayed with prom-
inence in her home, shows a vibrant
woman next to a mysterious face that
Stauffer calls “my warrior self.” A black-
bird, whose symbolism runs the gamut,
looks backward.
“It was life — a new life,” she said.
“I realize that it was unraveling my own
story.”
She self-published a book shared only
among trusted friends called, “Paintings
from the Journey to Self.”
One illustration of her painting “Cur-
tain Call” portrays a woman removing two
theatrical masks to reveal her true face.
“It’s the masks we all wear,” she
explained. “We are all after being the tru-
est of who we are, and the art being the
pathway.”
Stauffer became entranced with how
Hawaiian culture, Buddhist teachings and
widespread reverence for the goddess
of fire, Pelehonuamea, blended to create
what she labels “deep mythic energies” in
the shadow of volcanoes.
But after 16 years, a hurricane, and an
infestation of wild pigs and rats were pre-
scient signals to move. One year later,
an eruption damaged Stauffer’s former
home and engulfed her beloved swimming
lagoon.
‘Magic’
A friend from Nahcotta, Washington,
suggested the Stauffer and Chuck move
to the Long Beach Peninsula. T the cou-
ple arrived in 2016. Stauffer set about
growing flowers around their cottage and
resumed her art, seeking to capture the
“feeling” of light and the atmosphere of
the ocean, bay and skies observed on fre-
quent walks.
She discovered how a palette knife
adds dimension.
“You can do all kinds of things to get
texture in clouds. It’s not just throwing the
paint on. ... It adds texture to the flat can-
vas,” she said.
Recently, she experimented with paper
clay to lift images even further off a flat
surface.
“You can keep adding these things to
your arsenal,” Stauffer said.
With classical music playing, she
begins each work using her weaker left
hand.
“It opens up my intuitive side. That’s
where the magic happens, but then the
right hand gives some control and finishes
it,” she said.
She is proud never to have repeated a
scene. Asked about the reward, her reply
is immediate.
“Inner peace,” adding with a clarifying
smile, “while I am painting.”
So is that more valuable than the com-
pleted picture?
“I love to paint. It’s my zone where
time disappears. I sit down and then it’s
two hours later ... I just keep going and
piling up the paintings. I am just glad I am
not a stone sculptor,” she said.
THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2021 // 9