History Knox
Mark Sebastian Jordan authors a column each Saturday reflecting on the history of the community.
MOUNT VERNON — Knox County has been artist Richard Cowdrey’s home for decades, but recently this region’s Amish life has become his direct inspiration.
An art show at a new gallery in Mount Vernon will soon open to share what he’s been working on, along with the work of several other distinguished artists.
Years ago, I interviewed Richard for the Mount Vernon News, and when we recently crossed paths as vendors at the Buckeye Book Fair, we decided to catch up in advance of the opening of the show he’ll be featured in at the Moss Spivak Gallery, 21 N. Main St. in Mount Vernon, from 6 to 9 pm on Friday, Nov. 20.
In addition to letting folks see what this highly successful artist has been up to lately, it was an opportunity for me to catch some insights into how another creator works, which is always a matter of interest to me.
Richard has been known in recent decades as the illustrator of children’s books, such as the Marley & Me series, and the playful Fiona the Hippo series. But recently, with the breathing room to work on something other than yet another looming deadline, he has turned his talents toward the rural Amish life he has observed locally for years.
Cowdrey said he can’t remember a time in his life when he wasn’t drawing. He once asked his mother, and she couldn’t remember a time, either. From crayons onward, Richard was always drawn to drawing.
He grew up on the blue-collar west side of Cincinnati, and doesn’t mind admitting that he was a wild child. As we conversed earlier this week, he told me that he only succeeded in passing from grade-to-grade in high school by the skin of his teeth.
He spent years hanging with the wrong crowd, distracting himself from the difficulties of growing up by searching for the next party.
Since drawing came to him naturally, he took an art class in his senior year in the hopes that it would be an easy credit. Instead, the teacher, Mr. Koenig, challenged him so much that at one point, Richard thought he might fail the class.
But little did he realize that Koenig was seeing past the student’s discipline and behavior issues to the genuine talent that illuminated his work.
Completely unknown to Richard, Koenig gathered a pile of the boy’s artworks and drove to the Columbus College of Art & Design and plopped the pile of works down in front of their admissions staff.
The result of this extraordinary action was sprung on Richard at graduation, when it was announced that he had been awarded a full scholarship to CCAD.
“I was stunned,” he said, reflecting back on that watershed moment.
It was at CCAD where it all clicked for the young artist. He had to maintain a ‘B’ grade or higher to keep his scholarship. That framework, which he today describes as an “art boot camp” gave him the discipline that he needed, and it changed his life.
He hastened to add that this doesn’t mean he was done yet with partying. Instead, combining a hard-partying lifestyle with a driven work ethic as an artist left him frazzled.
He considered dropping out of CCAD and moving to Montana to study forestry. His dad told him he’d be insane to do that, so he hesitated.
One Friday in April of 1981, he met another changing point in his life when his drawing class professor, Mr. Drummond, took him out into the hallway and called him out for his reckless life.
Richard then paused in our conversation and offered me a way out at this point, saying, “I’m going to get all religious on you.”
I said to bring it on. It’s an important part of his life, and central to the artist he has become, so I couldn’t imagine not including it. He said that Drummond asked him if he had “ever given Jesus a chance?”
Cowdrey, like many of his friends, had examined many religions without finding anything that felt right.
“I knew I wasn’t up to the performance-level of those religions,” he said.
But he had nothing to lose by considering what Drummond was saying.
The teacher loaned him a Bible and advised him to read the Gospel of John and think it over. He gave him no further pressure on his decision. When Richard read the suggested passages, it gave him some of the answers he needed in order to create himself anew. His faith gave him a pathway forward.
After graduating from CCAD, Cowdrey was recruited by Hallmark in Kansas City, which ultimately didn’t work out for him: “Too many fuzzy bunnies!”
But while there for six months, he overcame his intense dislike of acrylic painting by observing two older artists who specialized in painting landscapes and still-life scenes in acrylic.
He learned many techniques that helped him master the medium, to the point that he estimates 99.5% of his artworks today are acrylic.
He has even learned how to manipulate acrylics to simulate the look of watercolors and oil paints.
That devotion to technique has allowed him to create intricate paintings more quickly than one might expect.
“I can watch a football game while doing animal fur,” Richard laughed. “My fingers know what to do.”
While at CCAD, Richard met the woman who was to become his wife, Cindy. After the sojourn in Kansas City, Richard returned to Ohio and married Cindy. They moved to Vermont to fulfill a dream of having a house on a hill in the country in which to work.
Unfortunately, the lovely landscape proved temporary. The house they were renting was sold by the owner to Bostonians who intended to use it as a summer home.
When Richard and Cindy looked around, they found out why the owner had sold the house: It was a booming market for sellers, but not buyers. Prices had skyrocketed. Unable to find an affordable place, they and their young children returned to Ohio.
Living in Delaware for a time, the couple took country drives throughout the region. One day they happened upon the village of Gambier, which suddenly offered a combination of rural Ohio quiet and New England village charm.
They looked for a place and ended up living east of Gambier, in the rolling hills of eastern Knox County.
They’ve remained there for decades, except for one brief change: When their children were all grown up, they decided to follow them to the Columbus metropolitan area. Six months of that was enough to make them miss their country home terribly.
Luckily enough, they were able to find a house on the same road as their original place in which to move back.
The early part of Richard’s career as an illustrator included high-profile work such as a Super Bowl design for the NFL, and projects for Chase Manhattan, Wendy’s, and the World Wildlife Fund.
His love of illustrating animals led to his agent proposing him as an illustrator for the children’s book version of the bestselling memoir Marley & Me. The book was unknown to Cowdrey at the time, but when he read it, it resonated with him because of his own experiences with his yellow lab named Murphy.
He eagerly jumped into the project. The resulting book reached No. 1 on the New York Times list of bestsellers. More Marley books and further children’s books followed.
This also led to a new side pursuit: speaking at schools. Richard was resistant, at first, to speaking proposals, as he could think of little that was more terrifying.
“I’d rather have a good beating than stand up in front of people,” he said, laughing. “But I knew it was a God thing.”
He finally went where the universe was nudging him to go, and found that it was very rewarding to do the talks because he loves children and their enthusiasm. He said that he’s still uncomfortable getting up in front of crowds, but that the format helps him.
He brings a PowerPoint program with him to display his artworks, happily keeping in mind that his audience will be looking more at his artworks than at him.
Years of commercial art projects, book covers, and children’s books have kept Cowdrey busy. He doesn’t envy the current atmosphere for young artists, due to the strong injection of Artificial Intelligence.
“It’s unbelievable and scary,” Cowdrey says. “If I were younger, I’d be really concerned.”
He shared the story of a friend of his who used to make his living drawing storyboards for film projects in Hollywood, which is the traditional way filmmakers plan out the scenes for a movie.
That friend is now unemployed, because studios have started using AI to churn out visual approximations of what it previously took an artist to create. He hopes that people recognize that only artworks by actual humans have any real soul. AI can mimic it, but it can’t create actual human insight and emotion.
These days, Richard is finding that human element in studies of rural Ohio Amish life. He said that in a way, it was the answer to the question, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”
If his previous work as an illustrator were indeed jobs, this project finds him reveling in the country life he has been immersed in for years. He is drawn to the sense of family, community, and work that is seen in Amish life, and has tried to capture that in his recent paintings.
He was invited to a barn raising and found himself wanting to capture the communal bustle of the project in a painting. He discreetly took photos — after clearing it with the Amish farmer, who said that if he didn’t notice it, he wouldn’t have to worry about it —which he could use as studies for the painting.
Cowdrey has found it a joyous project.
In a nice bit of serendipity, Cowdrey found that the artist Ian Moss wanted to start a gallery in Mount Vernon around the same time that Richard had gathered his set of Amish paintings.
Thus, he became one of the artists whose work will be presented at the debut of the Moss Spivak Gallery.
On social media, Moss has said that the gallery is named in honor of his grandmother, Carol Moss Spivak, who supported the arts her entire life, and gave him the connection to art which changed his life.
The gallery, located at 21 N. Main St. in Mount Vernon, will officially open with a ribbon-cutting at noon on Nov. 20, with an opening reception that evening from 6 to 9 p.m.
Artists featured in the show include David W. Groff, Christopher L. Hansen, Ian Moss, Ryan Robinson, and the amazing Samantha Schneider, familiar to Mansfield art fans from her works seen at the Mansfield Art Center.
As for Richard Cowdrey, he will let his paintbrush lead the way to his next works. He’s currently working on a painting of a not-specifically-Amish horse, and will let his inspiration evolve as it develops.
One thing is clear, that he finds joy and fulfillment in doing the work he was created to do.
