JACKSON ART TEACHER FINDS LIFE AFTER RETIREMENT SATISFYING

Wickham describes himself as a messy painter, getting more paint on rags than the brushes.

Jackson artist Herb Wickham says he paints like he's killing snakes -- quickly.

"I work pretty fast," Wickham says of his paintings. "You can't sit back; it's work. You stand up at the easel until you get a back ache."

While most any morning Wickham can be found painting in his studio on High Street, he hasn't been interested in art his whole life.

In fact, Wickham didn't spend much of his time in high school thinking about art at all. He says that the smaller schools, like the ones he attended in Hayti and Malden, "couldn't have everything."

One of the things they didn't have very many of was art classes.

"But my mom painted so it was around the house," Wickham said of his early awareness of art.

Wickham first became serious about art while attending Southeast Missouri State University on a four-year football scholarship.

During his freshman year, Wickham "wandered over to the art department" and took the freshman art class, which he enjoyed.

"My big ambition was to coach," Wickham said. "But I took all the art courses they had and pretty much liked them all."

Upon graduation, he got a job teaching at Poplar Bluff. While living his dream of coaching, he also taught a few art classes.

After five years of doing this he got a job offer to teach in Jackson. And he figured, "Shoot, why not?"

He took the job, little realizing he'd be there for 30 years.

"I still coached at first," Wickham said. "But as the art program got bigger, I was doing more and more of that. So I finally had to decide what I wanted to do more."

He says he realized he really didn't have any ambition to become a head coach, so he devoted all his time to teaching art.

"Teaching art is a pleasure," said Wickham of his tenure. "Most people that do it like it. Of course, a few kids would rather have been somewhere else. But I never regretted doing it."

Upon retirement in 1990, Wickham shifted his emphasis from teaching art to being a practicing artist. Now he spends several hours a day in his studio painting. When he's not doing that he can be found on the golf course or out fishing near Glen Allen.

He likes his schedule and a lot of the time he likes his work, but he says everything he draws isn't a masterpiece.

"If I work on them very long and they don't come together very quickly, I just get more and more distracted and they go downhill," Wickham said.

Like everyone, Wickham is certainly more satisfied when things do go his way.

"Sometimes I get on these rolls -- I get fired up and may go a week or two and knock out five paintings."

He says when he gets on these rolls, he gets pretty excited.

"I'll get all worked up and can't sleep at night. A lot of times I'll think of something and try to come up here really early in the morning."

Wickham says spending too much time in front of the easel can be a problem, too, however.

"You spend so much time with your nose up on it" that you might lose your objectivity, he said.

He may lose his initial excitement on it and he says it may be worthwhile to put it in the closet and pull it out a little later.

"I don't think a guy can work on these things long enough to make it perfect.

"There's no such thing as a perfect picture."

Wickham has a method of determining when he's worked on a painting long enough. He says he works on a painting until he's not ashamed of it.

When the product is finished, Wickham says not everyone agrees on the quality of it.

"A lot of the ones I didn't like, people liked a lot and a lot of the ones I've cared for people didn't like."

But Wickham says that's just the way it goes.

"I don't paint pictures to please other people," he said.

Wickham says he mostly paints rural landscapes -- "little views, a bend of road," and gets his ideas just looking around. He does paintings of covered bridges, trees, natural settings -- anything one could imaging.

One of his favorite paintings is of two cowboys riding behind several white-faced cows.

To get an idea of what the cows looked like, he had to go to their pasture and study them.

"I looked at them a while and they looked at me a while and I figured out how to draw them," he said.

Wickham draws the pictures first and then paints them with oil paints. He says he's a better drawer than painter.

"I don't think you can paint a good picture if you can't draw. You might have a good time, that would be about it."

While Wickham has painted hundreds on pictures, he still never runs out of ideas.

A lot of people have the notion that you get the idea through this "blast of inspiration." But Wickham says the best subjects can be anything.

"You can go out and paint a pile of dog crap and if it's done right, it'll be a good picture. It doesn't have to be too fancy. If you waited until you had some burst of inspiration, you'd never get one done."

Wickham is also on the board of the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri, which he says "has an iron in every fire." Through this group he works with theater arts and goes to schools to help promote art awareness.

Wickham has indeed lived an interesting life, but never takes things to seriously, including himself.

"I don't feel like I'm particularly talented, but I've drawn so many pictures I figure I've got a 50-50 chance of getting something worth looking at."