The evocative, enduring art of Allen Whiting

We enter Allen Whiting’s sumptuous art through our senses — what our eyes see, our bodies feel. Whiting’s keen eye and expressive brush capture the very essence of the natural world. 

For decades, color and form have merged to support one another in Whiting’s paintings, creating images that evoke a landscape rather than depict it with photographic precision. His style is transportive, planting us in the scene so we feel the air’s temperature, the sounds of nature, and the smell of the land or water. 

The land, and in particular, Martha’s Vineyard, has been Whiting’s muse throughout his life. He was born in the same house where he now resides, on the West Tisbury farm his great-grandfather established in 1851. He still tends the family farm, just as he did as a kid, when he helped his father. Looking out the kitchen window at home, Whiting continues to find inspiration right at his doorstep: “It’s all right there. It’s a matter of me finding what’s right for me.”

Whiting’s paintings fill his entire house, which he shares with his wife, Lynne, whom he met at the Field Gallery. While he was growing up, among the art on the walls was that of his grandfather, Percy Cowen, whose work Whiting greatly admires. Additionally, his best friend’s father was Stanley Murphy, a renowned self-taught American artist who spent more than 50 years painting portraits, landscapes, and murals depicting the Island’s residents and natural beauty: “Between the two houses, I had my own art education every day. His door was always open to me.”

Whiting knew art was his calling from early on. “When I was 10 at the West Tisbury School, I would come in from recess 10 minutes early and run upstairs. They had the Encyclopedia Britannica, and they had this Frederic Remington painting, and every day I’d study it. I always had it in me. And I used to copy my grandfather’s art.” Another memory was driving near the beach with his father when he was 11 or 12. “I remember seeing a receding row of scrub oaks going down toward the ocean. I was looking out the truck window and feeling, ‘There’s something here for me, but I don’t really know what it is.’ I’m still painting that row of trees.”

When asked what drew him to art at such a young age, Whiting reflects, “I don’t know. I think it’s just in you. I tease people: If I could sing or play baseball, I probably wouldn’t paint. But something struck a chord.”

Whiting had little formal art training until he attended the University of Miami and later Windham College in Vermont, where he graduated magna cum laude. After graduating, Whiting returned home: “I had an affinity for the landscape, and a support system here.” It was after seeing a show at the Museum of Fine Arts that Whiting truly decided to dedicate himself to painting. “I always had another job, whether it was house painting, carpentry, or working for my dad. But they all sent me back to my easel, because that’s what I really wanted to do.”

Although Whiting has painted still lifes, abstractions, and occasionally figures, landscapes are where his heart truly lies. He doesn’t quite know what keeps pulling him back to the subject after all these years: “Sometimes I feel like a scientist in a white coat looking for that missing gene that’s going to solve cancer. You may never find it, but that’s how you spend your life.” 

After many decades, Whiting still finds inspiration from a walk on a moonlit night or a late fall afternoon when the colors are turning. “The older I get, the simpler it gets,” he says of his art. “I’m still painting the same subjects, the same trees, just different times of the year. I try to bring something a little different to it, but I don’t dwell on that. I say, ‘Well, it’s still there, and I still like it. Maybe this time I’ll get it better.’”

Whiting speaks about his connection to the natural world: “I’m not a religious person, but I feel the most spiritual when the landscape connects with me.” He continues, “One time, I got a call from the Cape Cod Times for a phone interview. The reporter asked, ‘Who is your inspiration? Manet? Monet? Who does it for you?’ I said, ‘I just got off the tractor from cutting five acres of beautiful hay. That’s what does it for me. That row of trees, that green grass.’ It’s pretty much that simple. I’m a painter, but I grew up on a farm, and I still farm.”

Whiting’s response to the land is like visual music, brushstrokes working together to create an expressive composition. His paintings are simultaneously immediate and timeless. C.K. Wolfson, in an essay in “Allen Whiting: A Painter at Sixty,” describes the artist’s process: “Standing fixed and easy in front of his landscape easel, he gazes back and forth between the canvas and the field in front of him … Each stroke marks an increase in focus and intensity. His comments are muttered and directed at himself — ‘There’s that russet at the bottom of the yellows.’ Cobalts, cadmiums, ochres — one color is not always wiped off his brush before it is dabbed into another. The wet oil paint is pushed away with a swipe of a gloved thumb or old red cloth.”

Whiting had his first exhibition in 1970 at the Field Gallery in West Tisbury, just as it was getting started. In fact, he helped Tom Maley and friends build it. It was an auspicious time for young artists on the Vineyard: “People were pouring in here, falling in love with the place, and had a little money in their pocket. The show gave me a feeling of professionalism — a boost to get going. I was lucky, being in the right place at the right time.” Over the course of his career, Whiting has exhibited in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, among other cities. Throughout, he has sold work from his home gallery, and today, it is open on weekends and by appointment. “I think State Road is about as good as it gets, because of the captive audience who love it here,” he says about his prime Vineyard location. But ultimately, Whiting says, “You do paint for yourself. The older I get, the more I realize it is for me.”

Whiting’s deeply evocative paintings enhance our appreciation of the Island’s rich vistas, which is exactly what he hopes for. “People will say, ‘You know, I was driving by this field in Chilmark in the afternoon, and I said, there’s an Allen Whiting.’ I want them to realize that I didn’t create the beauty. It doesn’t belong to me. But I appreciate it when they appreciate my efforts.” He adds, “I like painting from life. It’s a remembrance. I will always recall being in that place at that time.”

Coming up on his 80th birthday, Whiting is still working on the farm with the help of his children, and painting virtually daily: “I’m getting older; I’m adjusting rather than giving up on anything. I just want to go out and find that bramble bush in the evening with my table and my paints and make a picture of it.”

Contact Allen Whiting at the Davis House Gallery, 508-693-4691.