The Willoughbys: going back to the future

By Heather Curtis - August 2, 2007

As a high schooler, Rick Willoughby's refusal to paint decorative snowflakes on the school's windows earned him a failing grade in art class. Despite the setback, Mr. Willoughby held on to his childhood dream of becoming a painter. Short of his high school art class, he never had any formal art training, but Mr. Willoughby did have something that can't be learned in a classroom - a passion for art and the ability to draw from an early age.

"I envisioned becoming some sort of famous painter when I was a kid, but life gets in the way," Mr. Willoughby says. "We had our first baby when I was 20." And like most artists, he was forced to choose between devoting himself to his art or paying the bills. "The real word is you have to out and earn a living."

Born on the Vineyard, his parents moved to Tewksbury when he was four. It was there that he met his wife, Marge, a friend of his sister's. He laughs and says, "When my sister had PJ parties, I'd tell all my friends I wouldn't be going out tonight."

After they married, Ms. Willoughby taught school while Mr. Willoughby was shipped off to Vietnam. Many years and many jobs later, the Willoughbys decided to come back to the Vineyard, where, once again, Mr. Willoughby's art had to take a backseat to earning a living.

It was the 1970s, and he worked as a commercial fisherman on the Island, operating his own boat, while Ms. Willoughby worked in the Edgartown Art Gallery and the Kennedy Studios. But as the fishery started dying down, in 1993 Mr. Willoughby did something that had always been in the back of his mind: he sold his boat and bought an art gallery.

The Willoughbys knew it would be a big undertaking to get a gallery up and running. But his love of art and her experience working at galleries made it possible. When they first opened the gallery, they sold limited edition prints and did framing, the "bread and butter" of the business, as Mr. Willoughby says. Over the years, the gallery evolved. "Just opening up a gallery is no guarantee of success," he says.

Willoughby Fine Art Gallery has moved three times since first opening its doors. One day in 1995, by an unexpected stroke of luck, they were told of a space that would be a perfect home for the gallery. So for the third time in two years, the Willoughbys packed up their paintings and moved to a historic 1703 house on Edgartown's North Water Street. And the third time was definitely a charm.

"Everything looks terrific in here. People can come in and see how paintings look in a home environment, so the space is very conducive to showing artwork," says Ms. Willoughby, smiling as she stands amid the paintings in the gallery's front room. The paintings include the works of 25-30 artists, including Mr. Willoughby and the Willoughbys' daughter, Sherry, who, like her father, has a curiosity and love of art.

"I think a lot of people really try to fight it, and try to earn a living in a different way," says Sherry, who worked for the Federal Reserve before joining her parents in their gallery. "But you find that your first love is the one that you tend to go back to," she says.

And the Vineyard is an ideal place for artists like the Willoughbys. Quiet Vineyard winters give them time to paint and research artists in preparation for the opening of the gallery in the summer. And Mr. Willoughby is never too far from the gallery, whose top floor houses his art studio.

The father and daughter share more than their love of art. They both paint impressionistic oil paintings of Island scenes. Unknown to either of them, Mr. Willoughby (in his studio) and Ms. Willoughby (in her Edgartown home) both started oil paintings of the Edgartown Light House.

"One thing our artists appreciate about us is where we do paint, we understand the process, and so when we talk to customers about the pieces of artwork we can tell them about technique," says Sherry Willoughby.

And telling their clients how the paintings were created is something the family loves to do. Their laid-back, friendly approach together with their love of talking about art has allowed the family to form close-knit friendships with artists and customers alike, many of whom invite them to their weddings and come back year after year to re-connect with the family.

"Forming long-standing relationships - that's always been our motto," Mr. Willoughby says. "The interesting part for me is when we started in this, a guy 29-30 years of age out of school with young children would come in here. Now we're selling paintings to his kids who are now the age he was when we met him," he says with a smile.

And it's always a thrill for the Willoughbys to sell someone their first real painting. And they certainly have plenty of variety to choose from. The walls of the gallery are filled with paintings representing traditional realism, depicting objects as they appear in real life, like Elizabeth Leary's paintings of houses and barns. They prefer realist paintings because, they explain, they stand the test of time. All the work in the gallery reflects the personal taste of the Willoughby family. "When we see an artist we truly enjoy, we don't measure by who's hot and who's not," says Mr. Willoughby. Instead they chose what they like.

Mr. Willoughby compares his gallery to stocks, saying, "I look at the gallery as a mutual fund with different artists." They regularly show the monochromatic paintings of country scenes done by Elizabeth W. Leary, the oil paintings of Luding Meng (who created "the Goddess of Democracy" sculpture during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Peking), and still lifes by Sean Farrell.

"These artists represent a core of mastery that depicts what we are all about as a gallery," says Mr. Willoughby.

And when the summer gives way to the solitude of the Vineyard winter, Mr. Willoughby and his daughter will each resume their places at their easels to finish their paintings of the Edgartown Light.

Heather Curtis is a freelance writer living in Vineyard Haven.