80 Level Painting With Light And Color
Stephen E. Coit ’71, a 69-year-old adventure backer and entrepreneur, is alive to advance the representation of bodies of blush at Harvard—one besom achievement at at time.
“I would never acknowledgment that because my paintings are like my children,” he said.
Coit, a 69-year-old adventure backer and entrepreneur, serves as the official Harvard Foundation Delineation Artist. In 2003, the Foundation’s Delineation Board commissioned him to acrylic portraits of arresting University affiliates of African American, Asian American, Latino American, and Native American coast who accept served Harvard in some accommodation for at atomic 25 years.
But Coit additionally paints portraits for added Harvard groups including the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study. To date, he has anointed 27 pictures of a advanced ambit of individuals spanning University administrators, acclaimed alumni, and arresting government staffers.
Coit has corrective abstracts like University President Drew G. Faust, above Broker of the United States Rosa G. Rios ’87, and longtime College admissions administrator David L. Evans.
Coit and Foundation admiral say his paintings accept acquired Harvard’s all-embracing account collection—comprising added than 750 oil portraits, according to a 2002 inventory—to added accurately reflect the school’s diversity. But Coit said his portraits may be beneath blackmail as Harvard’s 12 residential Houses—where abounding of his pictures hang—undergo renovations. Further complicating the pictures’ future, the Foundation is abyssal a capricious aeon afterwards above administrator S. Allen Counter died in July 2017, abrogation the alignment leaderless.
Coit said he takes the crisis airish to his portraits personally—he treats his paintings like bodies and thinks of them as friends.
“I try to accomplish abiding they accept acceptable homes and I appointment them. I appointment them because I alive with these paintings in my collapsed for months,” Coit said. “I bethink aback [the painting of Sociology Professor] Orlando Patterson larboard my studio, I absent him.”
Coit said he generally researches the accountable of a painting for months afore ambience besom to canvas. An acute focus on a subject’s claimed activity and appearance is an important allotment of the process, Coit said. For example, his account of Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, the aboriginal Native American to alum from the College, took nine months of research.
Coit’s painting of Cheeshahteaumuck hangs in Annenberg Hall, the apprentice dining hall.
Sandra Naddaff, the armchair of the Foundation’s delineation project, alleged the bulk of time Coit spends researching his capacity “quite wonderful.”
“That compassionate of the bodies he is painting and what they contributed to the College are...things that he comes to accept on a actual abysmal akin and again is able to bury in the account itself,” Naddaff said.
Coit said he believes acute assurance with a accountable is all-important for his compositions.
“Having the adeptness to accept a chat with a painting, to me, is allotment of my artful mission,” Coit said.
He said he hopes acceptance who appointment his assignment will booty allotment in this conversation. Coit’s paintings are currently displayed in several locations on campus including assorted Houses, dining halls, authoritative and bookish buildings, and libraries.
Coit said he aboriginal actively approved painting—not counting the watercolors he produced in aerial school—when he absitively to booty a breather from adventure basic in 1992. Soon after, he “caught a bug” and absitively to leave his position to activate painting abounding time, he said.
He started demography night art classes and traveling to Italy to appear alum oil painting courses. Coit said he approved to absolute his address by cartoon at every accessible moment.
“When I anticipation I could see my way financially—not some admirable one percent allotment of the pie, but abundant to be a amenable bedmate and parent—I approached my adventure basic armamentarium and said, ‘I can’t be this,’” Coit said.
He clearly stepped abroad from adventure basic in 1996, and said he has never looked back. Today, in accession to balance commissions, he occasionally teaches painting courses at Lowell House. Carol A. “Kitty” Pechet, an artisan who alternate in one of Coit’s classes, said she admires Coit’s action and the capacity he includes in his work.
“He seems to be able to put the appearance of somebody into vision. That’s not so easy,” Pechet said. “He has a dimensional compassionate of them. That’s why the paintings aren’t abandoned or flat.”
When Coit, who is white, was actuality interviewed for the position of official portraitist for the Foundation, he said Foundation board associates like Reverend Peter J. Gomes able him about his adeptness to represent bodies of blush faithfully.
“I said that there are no two bodies that accept the aforementioned blush bark and that accomplishing the able blush of bark to me is easier than painting the blush of blush granite in Maine in the morning fog,” Coit said.
Coit said he believes every person, situation, and lighting bureaucracy is different. He added “acute observation” is critical, abnormally aback gluttonous to represent bodies from assorted ancestral backgrounds. Harvard acceptance and admiral say assortment at the College is increasing—and affirmation Coit’s portraits are added analytical now than ever.
“Now we accept all of this assortment and it’s an adorning affair for Harvard College,” Eck said. “It’s important for our education, for our bookish activity and for our activity with one another. Not to accept that displayed in some allusive way on our walls is a mistake.”
Coit corrective Rios, the aboriginal Latina broker of the United States, in 2015. Her account now hangs in the Junior Common Room at Winthrop House.
In an account Thursday, Rios said Coit’s portraits are adorning to undergraduates.
“I’m a big accepter in this abutting bearing of administration accepting inspirations in adjustment to accept aspirations,” Rios said. “These types of opportunities to advertise and highlight examples of bodies who affectionate of absolved through the fire, if you will, and took those cardinal risks are important.”
Devontae A. Freeland ’19, an intern at the Harvard Foundation, said he sees agnate amount in announcement portraits of assorted abstracts at Harvard. He said he thinks what a -to-be apprentice acceptable saw on Harvard’s walls 20 years ago differs broadly from what acceptance see today.
“I anticipate that those symbols absolutely accomplish a aberration and that can accomplish a absolute appulse on Harvard’s recruitment, on our bringing in the best and brightest aptitude and not accepting bodies be beat because they feel Harvard doesn’t amount or represent their accurate chase or character or gender,” Freeland said.
After the casual of above Foundation administrator Counter this summer, some say the organization’s delineation activity faces an ambiguous future—particularly as Harvard seeks to check and renew anniversary of its 12 undergraduate Houses.
Coit said he is afraid House renovations could beggarly his portraits will be confused to beneath arresting locations, article he considers adverse to the mission of the activity as a whole. Lowell House, home to at atomic two of his portraits, will abide beneath architecture until the abatement of 2019—and Adams House, which boasts at atomic one of his pictures, will activate ability renovations in June 2019.
Apart from apropos over account relocation, Coit said he thinks the anew adapted Houses may not accommodate the adapted artful accomplishments for his paintings.
“Just because it looks avant-garde and glassy and it’s fabricated of bottle and you can see through it and it’s got a metal anatomy and the ablaze is cool, doesn’t beggarly it’s teaching you annihilation about who went afore you and what your job is here,” Coit said.
Naddaff, the armchair of the delineation project, accustomed the accent of announcement the portraits in locations area they are arresting to undergraduates. But she said added locations may be added admired than the Houses. In particular, she mentioned blind portraits in Annenberg, Lamont Library, and University Hall.
“I think, for best us, the Houses are area we anticipate the acceptance are, but absolutely acceptance are in abounding altered buildings,” Naddaff said.
The project’s approaching may additionally be in agnosticism due to Counter’s passing, according to Florence C. Ladd, biographer and above administrator of Radcliffe’s now-dissolved Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute.
“Dr. Alan Counter was active in branch the project. Now that he has anesthetized away, I don’t apperceive area the action to abide the assignment rests,” Ladd said.
Asked whether the accumulation would abide its assignment admitting Counter’s death, Naddaff said she believed it would.
“I accept no acumen to accept that it will not be abiding as a commitment,” she said.
Regardless of the delineation project’s fate, Coit said he thinks the portraits he has already corrective leave a bequest that will aftermost for decades.
