Doctor has prescription for artistic excellence

COLDWATER - As the old theory goes, most creative types are thought to be right-brained while those proficient in math and science, left-brained.

Coldwater's Jennifer Glance, though, blows that binary notion out of the water. A doctor by day with Mercer Health's OB/GYN team and a painter on the side, Glance puts to use both hemispheres of her cerebrum to provide health care for women and to express her worldview.

As it turns out, Glance's medical expertise actually informs and enhances her paintings, particularly her portraits, she said during an interview this week.

"You really have to understand color and light and physics and anatomy ... (as well as) bone structure and movement and things like that," she said.

Glance has been making a splash in the art world of late as her works have been represented by numerous galleries and featured in juried art shows, including the ongoing 11th annual Ohio Online Visual Artist Registry Juried Show on display at the Columbus Metropolitan Main Library's Carnegie Gallery through Jan. 6.

Glance was chosen from a pool of 95 applicants, who submitted almost 285 works for consideration, according to The Ohio Arts Council. She's one of four Western Ohio artists whose work is on display in the show.

Cash awards of $1,000 and $500 will be made based on ballots cast by patrons of the library and gallery, and presented during a closing reception on Jan. 6.

"The work will show visitors the wonderful breadth and quality of Ohio artists," Charles Kanwischer, director of Bowling Green State University's School of Art, said about the show.

Glance didn't have to look very far to find inspiration for her oil on canvas entitled "Fog over Field," which was selected for the show.

"That's actually my interpretation of my backyard (against a soybean farm). It's an Ohio landscape," she said.

Since moving to Coldwater in June 2016, Glance has focused her artistic eye on such local landscapes.

"I have a series of paintings with lots of gray skies based on the lake and the landscapes surrounding Grand Lake," she said.

She's especially drawn to water, coastlines and other landscapes that are largely impervious to time, in stark contrast to the short span of human mortality.

Her artistic credo reflects the words of American poet Walt Whitman, who wrote "Oh, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accident, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do," she said.

"Sometimes I paint on the scene and sometimes I take a picture and then come back to it," she said of her creative process. "A lot of times I will study something by memory and then just sit down and paint it. Once I'm inspired I just get it done."

Inspired urgency is a key component of her painting as much of her time is taken up by her work as a doctor. She tries, though, to carve out time for her field observations and studio work when she knows she won't be interrupted. Such sessions are often productive, with frenzied bursts of activity yielding numerous paintings at a time.

"Sometimes I'll do like seven paintings in a weekend," she said. "Sometimes I'll take a little break. It depends on how inspired I am," she explained. "When I'm getting ready for a show, I'll have more paintings."

The season generally dictates the type of materials Glance chooses to use on canvas.

"If it's wintertime, I try to stick more to acrylics and paints that easily clean up or watercolors," she said. "In the summer it's mostly oils. And those are a bit harder to work with, so I've got to commit more time so that would be more of a weekend or vacation."

Glance, who was born in Parma and has lived in Michigan and Maryland, has enjoyed a close relationship with art for most of her life.

"My work, it's been pretty consistent since I was a child," she said. "My mother used to take me to the National Gallery when I was very young. We grew up outside of D.C. and she had a strong love of art."

In high school, she "was technically professional," taking on commissioned artwork, she said. But she had to make a tough decision when contemplating her future at the time.

"I had a scholarship to study art ... but I knew at that point I was going to study medicine so I turned down the scholarship," she said. "My uncle studied art - and he's an engineer - and so he did dual majors. My family discouraged that. They said just focus on one."

Yet Glance, who earned a Doctorate of Osteopathic Medicine from Michigan State University, kept on painting in the ensuing years, and just two years ago, she began painting professionally again, concentrating on landscapes. Her paintings are represented by galleries in Dublin, Ohio, and in Michigan in Port Huron, St. Clair, Manistee and Rapids.

Her paintings, too, have been featured in numerous major juried shows.

"I've just been showing for the past two years, (including) a very good show in Detroit - The Carr Center - last year, and that was wrote up in the Detroit Free Press," she said. "I was very honored to be in that show because I'm shoulder to shoulder with professional artists."

With so much success, will Glance ever consider making the leap to full-time artist?

"I would be a starving artist," she quipped. "That was the decision I had to make when I was younger, and eventually, maybe when I'm close to retirement age, I think that may be a transition."

To learn more about Glance and her work, visit http://jenniferglance.com/.