Eubank displays a heart for art
By Barry Ward
Cooke Communications N.C.
Murfreesboro – Doug Eubank once dreamed of being an industrial artist, but that dream turned to becoming a painter in New York City with his own studio when he changed his major to art.
Eubank didn’t achieve either of those dreams, but says today he is content with the path he has taken.
The Cincinnati, Ohio native is a retired art instructor who now spends his days at his home in Murfreesboro drawing and painting whatever his imagination takes him.
Eubank’s home is literally a work of art as almost every painting and picture on the wall was done by him or his wife, Molly.
Pot of Art
The saucers, plates, cups and pitchers sitting on top of the dressers and tables at his home are pottery creations by Eubank.
He said he and his wife use some of the plates and cups he made to serve dinner.
But always the artist, Eubank gives his place setting potteries a different look.
“About 15 years ago I started making a lot of teapots,” said Eubank. “But they weren’t the conventional type of round teapots with a spout and a handle from behind.”
Several of his teapots have a more rectangular shape with four legs as opposed to a flat bottom.
Eubank said some of his potteries are stoneware, while others are made of porcelain.
“Stoneware is kind of a tough clay,” said Eubank. “It takes a lot of banging around the kitchen. You can kind of beat on it with a wooden spoon, and it holds up really well. Porcelain is a little more delicate. It’s not quite as sturdy as stoneware.”
He said a big advantage one has with pottery compared to painting and drawing is time.
“Some paintings might take a couple of days to do,” said Eubank. “But with pottery you have an immediate response. And if you don’t like it after 15 minutes, maybe less, you just smush it in, get another ball of clay, throw it on the wheel and start working again.”
But the time it took Eubank to get into pottery was a long one.
He had already been drawing and painting for several years and teaching it at Chowan University’s art department when the school asked him to teach pottery.
“I thought, ‘Oh great, I don’t know a thing about pottery,'” he said.
After teaching pottery for a few years, Eubank enrolled in his first formal pottery class at Penland School of Crafts, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
Eubank took the pottery courses at Penland for several years during the summer, and fell in love with it.
“In the long run that [making pottery] became my strong suit,” he said.
Paintings & Drawings
Most of Eubank’s drawings are still life and landscapes.
Still life is pictures of standalone objects like bowls and chairs, while landscapes are drawings or paintings of nature like mountains and lakes.
Eubank conveniently received practice in drawing and painting landscapes through his enrollment at Morehead State University in Morehead, Ky.
The school is located in the foothills of Kentucky where Eubank and his art class would go to draw the scenery around them.
He said he learned just as much about nature as art through drawing landscapes.
“The layers of mountains are real dark when they’re close [to a person], but as they gradually get farther behind they get lighter and lighter,” he said. “I never thought of that before, but after I started drawing them [the mountains] a couple of times I’d say, ‘It’s true. They do get lighter and lighter.'”
When it comes to drawing or painting, Eubank generally starts out on canvass with a rough pencil sketch and fills it in with color.
He said light is an important part of a painting because it shows reflection, the darks and shadow.
He said when doing pottery it is important to have an idea of what will be made.
But the same rules do not apply to drawing and painting.
Eubank said a person could just start doodling on their pad and end up creating a piece of art.
“It’s [creating drawing or painting] about how it leads you and where your imagination takes you,” Eubank said. “You just never know when drawing how it’ll come out.”
Art Appreciation
Eubank has sold many of his paintings, drawings and pottery through numerous exhibitions he has held throughout the country in cities like Philadelphia, Pa., Fayetteville, New Canaan, Conn. and Norfolk, Va.
He said there are some pieces of work he would never sell, and only puts them in exhibitions for people to admire.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is one of the many people who own a Eubank original.
Back in 1973 Eubank was in little Washington where an art train made a stop. The people on the art train asked him to do a pottery demonstration.
After making a piece of pottery a woman on the art train told him how much she liked his work.
“I had no idea who she was,” said Eubank.
He said the lady was with the wife of North Carolina’s governor, and she told him that she had met singers Charlie Daniels and Bob Dylan.
Eubank gave the woman a piece of pottery for free.
Then the woman told him that her husband was thinking about running for president.
The woman turned out to be Rosalynn Carter, wife of former President Jimmy Carter.
Being Schooled in Art
Eubank said he changed his major from industrial art to art when he began dating his wife, Molly.
He said Molly was an art major who has been painting and drawing for most of her life.
He said hanging around her, her fellow art majors and the art instructors at Morehead State, got him to change his major.
He admits he was mostly a novice when he switched majors, but gradually got better with constant practice.
After graduating from Morehead State University with a master’s degree in art, Eubank was employed as an art instructor at Chowan University.
He said he and his wife attended a conference where various schools were looking to hire teachers.
Eubank said he had no teaching experience prior to accepting the job at Chowan when he started in 1971.
“Looking back at those first few years I wonder, what did I teach them [his students],” he reflects.
Throughout his life and career Eubank has taught at other schools such as Lenoir Community College and Montgomery Community College.
But most of his teaching career has been at Chowan University, where he has recently retired.
Although health issues have caused him to cease pottery, Eubank continues to paint and draw.
Eubank’s advice for anyone looking to pursue a career in art is “do what your heart leads you to do.”
barrywardwriting 