This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Art dealer Jim Dabakis had everything in place for the prospective sale of a painting by his longtime friend Trevor Southey.
The buyers, a prominent New York City couple, traveled to Park City to see the work. As a bonus, Dabakis persuaded Southey to talk about the painting in person as the couple examined it.
To the couple's surprise, Southey, renowned for his figurative paintings, panned his own work. He wasn't all that happy with lines he drew for the nose, he told the couple. And the figure's hands weren't up to par.
Dabakis cringed over the lost commission, which happened some seven years ago, but the Park City-based dealer should have seen it coming, he said.
"Trevor has only one mode of operation, and that is complete honesty," Dabakis said by phone while on business in Tokyo. "He's also the kindest, most humble person I've known in a lifetime of working with arts people."
Southey learned drawing as a 7-year-old boy in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) confined to his bedroom by rheumatic fever. He joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after hearing four missionaries sing in peerless harmony and upon learning of the church's belief in the divinity of man.
After attending art school in Sussex, England, he moved to the United States, married and raised four children while teaching art at Brigham Young University. His life of family and community in Alpine was so utopian in aim he called his home "Eden Farm."
Even the spirit of his association with three other Utah artists in and around the small town sculptor Neil Hadlock and painters Dennis Smith and Gary E. Smith (no relation) was later known as the "Alpine Ideal."
Multiple lives, one artist
Then at age 42, after anguished consideration, Southey declared his identity as a gay man. He moved to California's Bay Area in 1985; he now lives there with his daughter and 6-year-old grandson.
"I like to say I've lived five lives in one body, and the artist's life is just one of those," Southey said. "But to this day I get very angry if I haven't touched a paintbrush. I have to remind myself why I might be feeling depressed. 'Of course you're feeling blue, you idiot,' I'll say to myself. 'You haven't done any work.' "
Southey's best work from every major phase of his life will be exhibited at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, beginning Thursday, Oct. 21. Titled "Reconciliation," the exhibit will hang through Feb. 13.
Ever self-critical, Southey said he looks forward to the exhibition mostly as a chance to catch up with old Utah friends. Only two works in the total exhibition meet his approval, "Prodigal" and "Jesus and Mary: The Morning After," oil paintings from 1974 and 1975 respectively. "Those two get a pass, but only up to a point," he said.
Artistic aspirations
On its surface, Southey's artistic life bears all the markers of success. His paintings have graced museums from London to his native Zimbabwe and found their way into numerous corporate and private collections, including those of actor Brooke Shields and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.
His name is still remembered in Utah for his large-scale painting of nudes, "Flight Aspiration," which in 1981 was the catalyst to one of the state's best-known cases of art censorship. The work hung briefly at the Salt Lake City International Airport, sparking complaints from the Citizens for True Freedom group, which prompted the artwork's removal from its public display.
On a deeper level, the path of Southey, now 70 and diagnosed with prostate cancer and Parkinson's disease, is a progression toward beauty and its itinerant ideals. For every step in that direction, the seismic changes in his life could have thrown him off course. Instead, the tensions he experienced between the actual and the ideal gave his art constant and consistent vision.
Speaking by phone from his home in California's Bay Area, Southey said he sees his life as a search for spaces between "freedom" and "restriction." Teaching art at BYU, Southey wasn't allowed to let his students draw from nude models. To his continual dismay, paintings in which he glorified the human form were deemed "inappropriate."
His human figures, rendered in an almost aching delicacy, are immediately recognizable. But they hover, float and even fly in environments too ethereal and mysterious to be set in reality. Even when his subjects stand and interact in traditional scenes, as in pouring milk from a pail, they impart a foreign sense of solace and grace.
Art beyond time
Through art, he aims for a place beyond even time, Southey claims. "[My work] does not reflect the art of the 20th century," the artist said. "To me, that actually celebrates and perpetuates the madness. My work is a celebration of beauty and sanity. Beauty is the thing that matters to me more than anything beyond people."
Don't come to Southey for homey celebrations of "the common man," said Dennis Smith, Southey's friend from his days in Alpine. In an age of irony and cynicism, his paintings are steeped, like strong tea, in traits considered either quaint or worn. Nobility, heroism and innocence are themes Southey invokes without apology.
"I've always expressed my ideals as if I were living and painting in Renaissance Italy, not puritanical heartland America," Southey said.
Smith said he sees Southey's upcoming exhibition at UMFA as a homecoming of sorts.
"The irony of hosting his exhibition within the cultural format of Utah is indicative of the tender feelings he has about the place, despite the jarring criticism he received from people who misunderstood his work."
Gretchen Dietrich, executive director of the UMFA, said the exhibition has been in the works for two years. "Southey's art rooted so deeply in the human figure is an amazingly rich and lyrical exploration of what it means to be a human being," Dietrich said.
Trevor Southey: Reconciliation
P The retrospective includes work from every major phase of the artist's life.
When • Oct. 21-Feb. 13
Museum hours • Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Wednesday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; closed Mondays and holidays.
Where • Utah Museum of Fine Arts, 410 Campus Center Drive, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
Info • Admission is $7 for adults, $5 for youth and seniors, free for U. students, faculty, staff and children 6 and younger. Admission is free during the first Wednesday and third Saturday of each month. Call 801-581-7332 for information, or visit http://www.umfa.utah.edu.
Artist reception, discussion
P The Utah Museum of Fine Art will host an opening reception for Southey on Thursday, Oct. 21, from 4:30-6:30 p.m. The University of Utah Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center will host the reception as part of Pride Week celebrations. The reception is free of charge, and light refreshments will be served.
A panel discussion about the "Alpine Ideal" will follow, from 6:30-8 p.m. Southey and artists Neil Hadlock, Dennis Smith and Gary E. Smith will discuss their lives and work as embodied in the "Alpine Ideal" they held in common as Utah artists during the 1970s.