Amish and Mennonite folk painting exhibit, including Emma Schrock paintings, opens Jan. 16

GOSHEN, Ind. – They never took an art class or had dreams of their work hanging in a gallery. But paintings made by self-taught folk painters from Amish and conservative Mennonite communities, including well-known folk painter Emma Schrock, will be on exhibit in the Goshen College Library Gallery beginning Jan. 16 with a reception for the public from 2 to 4 p.m. The exhibit will be on display until May 13.

Artists, gallery owners, critics and others sometimes call such art “outsider” art because it comes from artists and communities that are not involved in mainstream commercial or academic art worlds.

“A better term for this art is ‘folk’ art, since the artists are very much ‘inside’ their own traditional, or folk, cultures. So much so, in fact, that the subjects of their landscapes and genre paintings come directly from their everyday experience and are done to appeal especially to people from their close-knit communities,” said exhibit organizer Ervin Beck, Goshen College professor emeritus of English.

As Schrock said, “I live what I paint and I paint what I see.” 

Folk artists often depict everyday reality in a stylized manner, even if they are aiming at a kind of realism. Although each artist has a distinctive style, usually forms are simplified, colors are exaggerated and perspectives are flat. Those qualities lead some observers to regard such art as “naïve” or “primitive,” although like “outsider,” these terms are condescending because they assume that academic art is normative.

“I like these folk paintings because they are unpretentious and often have an interesting non-photographic abstraction that you don’t get in studied paintings,” said Faye Peterson, curator of the exhibit. “It is sort of like children’s art, you are often surprised. There is a spontaneity about them that you can’t predict. They are easy to relate to and there is a deep humanity about them.”

Though Amish and conservative Mennonites do not typically revere nonfunctional art, or art for art’s sake, they often accept paintings like those exhibited here because they depict the local scene, they are homemade by people that they know, and they are inexpensive to buy, according to Beck, a folklorist. Two noted Amish exceptions in this exhibit are Schrock, whose Old Order Mennonite community forbids the depiction of the human form, and Abraham Z. Peachey, who painted Mifflin County Amish landscapes that he himself was not allowed, by his church, to hang on the walls of his own home.

A third of the exhibit paintings come from Schrock, who lived from 1924 to 1991 and resided near Wakarusa, Ind. She bought her first paint canvas when she was 40 years old. Born physically handicapped, painting became the way that Schrock earned a living, creating one piece a day. A wheelchair made for her in childhood by her father will also be on display.

A reverse painting on glass titled “Rock Run Flowing Well Farm,” made by Fannie Troyer in 1930, which depicts the home of her parents, Seth and Lizzie Troyer, near Goshen in Clinton Township, Ind., will be on display, as well as a three-dimensional plaster bas relief piece, “Barn-raising,” by Aaron Zook of Lancaster County, Pa.

Leah Johnson, a Holdeman Mennonite from Montezuma, Kan., has painted sod houses set in various Kansas regional landscapes since 1967. She uses a self-developed, three-dimensional sand-painting technique, which can be seen in her “Old Soddy” painting, which will be on display.

Other artists, mostl Amish or formerly Amish, included in the exhibit are Benuel King from Lancaster County, Pa.; August Wickey from Berne, Ind.; Joni Hostetler from Fredericksburg, Ohio; Anthony Yoder from Kalona, Iowa; Dan M. Yoder Jr. from Belleville, Pa.

The exhibit content is primarily acrylic paintings, but also includes reverse painting on glass, watercolor, painted plaster bas relief, sand painting and paintings on a plate, saw blade, ironing board and crockery. The artistic subjects include scenes of homesteads, auctions, thrashings, quiltings, church and school life, and animals.

“These folk paintings from conservative Anabaptist communities suggest once more that the impulse toward artistic expression is a universal one and that the love of colorful images cannot be denied,” said Beck.

The Library Gallery, located on the lower level of the Wilma and Harold Good Library, is open from 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, noon to 6 p.m. Saturday and 1 to 11 p.m. Sunday.

The exhibit is sponsored by the Mennonite-Amish Museum Committee and the Mennonite Historical Library.

Goshen College, established in 1894, is a four-year residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college’s Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron’s Best Buys in Education, “Colleges of Distinction,” “Making a Difference College Guide” and U.S.News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” edition, which named Goshen a “least debt college.” Visit https://www.goshen.edu/.

Editors: For more information, contact News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

###