The artist Jolly surrounded himself in his studio with watercolors of historic locations like Shaker Village. Photo by Emily Giancarlo
A haven for nature, a storehouse of history and a testament of architectural and cultural significance, Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill has long held a special place in the life and career of noted Lexington architect-turned-painter Charles Jolly. In the early 1970s, as a student in architecture, Jolly regularly traveled to the historic village to study; the next decade, he worked as an architect on the rehabilitation of some of the Pleasant Hill buildings. In fact, the place became so special to Jolly that he and his wife had their wedding there. So it’s not surprising that when he started his journey as a watercolor artist more than 40 years ago, Shaker Village was one of the first places he found inspiration.
Today, in the artist studio he’s converted from a garage behind his home, Jolly surrounds himself with watercolor paintings of Pleasant Hill and other locations. His paintings are his reflections on places and things that have strong ties to the past, illuminated in the present day. The exhibition Pleasant Hill Paintings: An Exhibition of Works by Charles Jolly, on display at Shaker Village through Oct. 12, features a collection of those paintings inspired by his connection to the place.
Jolly’s foray into visual art came from the same seed as his architecture career: a desire to create. In the early 1980s, he was working as an architect and also working to improve the Fairway house and garden he and his young family called home. But he still had a drive to further his creative expression.
Photo by Emily Giancarlo
“I hadn’t really had any training. I just wanted to paint,” he said. “Art appealed to me, particularly watercolor, because I thought I needed something that I could start and finish in a few hours.”
Over the past four decades, he has transitioned into a full-time artist, regularly hosting watercolor workshops and exhibitions in his home studio and other locations.
While luminosity and transparency are often defining characteristics of watercolor works, Jolly’s emphasis on darker values and colors sets his work apart.
“What [darker colors] do is that they begin to kind of spatially arrange things – they are able to pull something that’s kind of there and push it out in front,” he said. “When you think about what it is that you see, you look at something with those darker values around it and everything else kind of fades out of focus.”
The art in Jolly’s Shaker Village exhibition captures not only the clean lines of the village, but also incorporates the vibrant colors of the Kentucky countryside. Rich, dark colors of verdant greens and ochre yellows marry darker shades of brown to give the paintings the feeling of a late summer day in the Kentucky woods. The effect is intentional, he said, with the contrast of those rich, dark colors giving vibrancy to the brighter colors in the paintings. The collection is a tribute to the beauty, serenity and architectural significance he has appreciated from the venue for more than half a century.
“Pleasant Hill is this special place. The feeling is so serene, and architecturally, it’s exquisite in terms of the idea and the detail,” said Jolly, who has long been intrigued by the cultural history of the location as well. Founded in 1805, the 3,000-acre village was the site of a communal religious sect led by a woman, Mother Ann Lee. In a formative period of the nation, the group found a place in the Kentucky wilderness.
Photo by Emily Giancarlo
“They were this remarkable counterculture,” he said. “They didn’t believe in private ownership, everything was communal. They redefined what work meant, in service of their religion. They turned craft into religion and religion into craft. And all of those things they were doing in the middle of the Kentucky wilderness.”
When the administration of Pleasant Hill approached Jolly about the art exhibit, he took it as an opportunity to look at Shaker Village through a present-day lens, knowing what had been there before, he said. His experiences working, studying and enjoying the nature and serenity of the site informed the development of this collection of paintings.
“What revealed itself to me was that this was a bit about how time flows through you and through Shakertown,” he said. “What I was seeing were things that were once built, then decayed, and then were rebuilt. There’s that kind of life that goes through things.”
In addition to acknowledging the past and the present state of the village, the exhibition also invites questions about its future.
“The village, in 1805, was closer to the 1600s and the time of William Shakespeare and Martin Luther than it is to us today,” Jolly said. “What will it be in another 200 years?”
“Pleasant Hill Paintings: An Exhibition of Works by Charles Jolly” is on display through Oct. 12 on the second floor of the Centre Family Dwelling building in Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, located in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
Artist Charles Jolly has converted a former garage behind his Henry Clay Avenue home into a working studio and gallery space. Photo by Emily Giancarlo