Painters realistic about their work

Austin Dwyer's painting studio feels like a cross between a log cabin and a ship's deck with its wood paneling, dappled light from skylights, a loft and telescope taking in views of Puget Sound.

There's even a horse tethered across the road from his house, less than a quarter-mile from the Mukilteo ferry pier.

Perfect, picturesque painting country.

"I live in two worlds," he said. "Architecturally, [the house] is much more modern. I can come over here and kind of get away into my own little world at the log cabin and the ship, and when I go over there, I'm kind of back into reality."

That sums up the painter's art neatly. It's a pact between hand and eye that shapes and interprets nature.

Dwyer is a member of the Puget Sound Group of Northwest Painters, in its 76th year and the backbone of Northwest realism. He and Grant Saylor, another member, have a show of work opening this month at the Point Elliott Art Center in Mukilteo.

Their paintings, in collections throughout the U.S., have been displayed at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, the West Coast Paper Show, the Foss Maritime shows and the Kirsten Gallery's maritime shows.

Like Saylor, the much-honored Dwyer is also a member of the American Society of Marine Artists.

Painting colleagues, Dwyer and Saylor are also friends and neighbors with some strong parallels. They have spent years as illustrators in the advertising business.

"I was on Madison Avenue, making a living," Saylor said.

"I had a family to support, and it was 21 years of misery for me. I fit in like a square peg in a round hole. I was a renderer for most of the time, and art director. There was no time to paint, except weekends, and you'd struggle to do that."

The Everett-born artist studied at New York's Pratt Institute after his four years in the Air Force during the Korean War, doing graphic arts and illustrations for intelligence and presentations. After the war, Saylor worked as a professional illustrator on projects for clients as varied as Johnson & Johnson, Revlon and Boeing. In 1978, he, his wife, Ellen, and their three children moved back to the Northwest, where he worked at Cole and Weber Advertising and taught at the Seattle Art Institute. Later, he worked on many freelance commissions, and since 1984 has devoted his time to painting.

Dwyer, born in Ireland, studied both music and art in Dublin, and art in London and Frankfurt, Germany, before coming to the Northwest in 1961 and studying for three years at the Burnley School of Professional Art in Seattle, then teaching there for 14 years. He and his wife, Mig, raised eight children in the Northwest, and for the past 25 years, he has been a principal owner of the Cohen Dwyer Advertising agency in Seattle.

Saylor's Everett studio, farther up Mukilteo Boulevard, is also a light-filled, second-floor loft, where paintings are stacked against the walls.

"I've got a dozen of them I can't even hang," he said. "I don't have enough hanging space. All I've got is windows."

Their pictures are a vibrant window on other worlds:

Saylor's watercolor of a rowboat beached in marshy woods in Maine has the precision of a Wyeth. A seascape brings the biscuit-powder beach near Waldport, Ore., to life. A small tribal fishing boat churns through rough seas at La Push on the Washington coast.

In Dwyer's studio, a woman in a black slip is poised on the edge of a bed in Dublin, a religious icon on the wall. A Dublin waif holds out an alms box for an orphanage. The historic schooner Wawona sternly battles its way through stormy gray waters. A piper stands on the hill as a group of people gather at an Irish cemetery below — potential art for a novel Dwyer has written about the Irish experience in America.

It all makes for compelling visual storytelling. And since each man has the discipline and command of years of daily art projects, each is able to paint in strict realism, perfectly replicating historic ships, buildings, landscapes and street scenes.

But each man also has a less deliberate, more exploratory style.

"It's like calisthenics, like working out," Dwyer said. "If I don't have a plan in my head, I'll just work with the paint I have and just start throwing it around until something happens."

However, he added, "research is critical, especially if you're painting scenes of areas that have to replicate what they look like."

Saylor calls Dwyer a "Renaissance man."

"Austin and I are as different as night and day," he said. "And yet he does beautiful work. I love his work."

"Grant is one of my favorite painters," said Dwyer. "He's moody; he never seems to be satisfied when you go out on location. And that's kind of typical. Anybody who's really, really happy with something that they did, I don't know if they can get around to doing the next thing and do a better job. That's what you're looking for."

Both say that moment when they sign a painting can take days, weeks or months. Excellence is a goal — and a journey, said Saylor.

"You go as high as you can go," he said. "There is no destination. You get off when you die or when you're through doing your best."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com