I wrote this piece for publication in the Gainesville Sun.
It was serendipity that swept Eleanor Blair off to Gainesville.
A newly minted art school graduate weary of trying to survive in pricy New York City, Blair had followed her parents to Sarasota.
Where she got a marginal job painting signs for a department store and living in a “horrible hovel.”
One day she was riding her bicycle when an acquaintance pulled up in a VW bug with three passengers. The driver invited Blair to accompany them to a rock concert in Gainesville.
“I laid my bicycle down by the side of the road and hopped in the back seat.”
“It was the 1970s,” she explained.
It was 1971, to be precise. And they got to Gainesville only to find that the concert had been canceled. So they crashed with a hospitable friend and spent some time getting to know Gainesville.
“We went to the Devil’s Millhopper and scrambled down the vines and weeds to the bottom.” This before The Millhopper became a protected geological state park. “There were people picnicking down there and somebody gave us watermelon.”
Back at their host’s house they participated in a neighborhood sing-along. One of the neighbors, Blair recalled, “had a really high voice.”
That would be Minnie Riperton.
Blair’s first blush impression of Gainesville: Having previously lived in Aspen, New York City and Sarasota “I had never in my life experienced that level of friendliness and radical hospitality.”
“I went back to my little squalid apartment and packed up my ‘51 Plymouth. I had a lamp, a shopping bag full of clothing, a box of paints and $40.”
And she drove back to Gainesville.
Where she slept in somebody’s hallway for awhile.
That was 53 years ago. And over the ensuing decades Eleanor Blair would become Gainesville’s best known and most prolific landscape and still life artist. By her estimation she’s done on the order of 15,000 oil paintings, many of which are “hanging on walls all over the world.”
But after more than a half century enjoying the “radical hospitality” that is Gainesville, Blair, 77, moved out of her Duck Pond house. And with her two dogs, Buckley and Maybelline, she decamped for Austin in order to be closer to her children and grandchildren.
Eschewing interstates, the trio stuck to back roads all the way. “It took three days and we stopped at every boat ramp, park, river, overlook and cemetery.”
Gone but hardly forgotten.
She leaves behind a Gainesville legacy perhaps best summed up in an “Eleanor Blair Day” proclamation signed by Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward:
“Eleanor Blair’s landscape and still life paintings capture the grandeur, mystery, and unique qualities of sky, water, foliage, and Florida-ness of this place…”
Ward would later say: “When I think about Gainesville and the natural environment that surrounds us the picture that comes to my mind is an Ellie Blair oil painting.”
Looking back, Blair reflects on what it is about Gainesville that captivates, even seduces, an artist such as herself.
“I think most clearly what Gainesville has is an amazing audience,” she said. “All artists, but especially emerging artists need an audience. And I found that in Gainesville.”
“This is an incredibly diverse community made up of people who stop and look at paintings, go to the theater and poetry readings and concerts.”
The “other side of that coin,” she adds, is that Gainesville draws creative people like a magnet. “For me personally I was attracted by the beauty of the town and the amazing geological wonders of places like Paynes Prairie, Newnans Lake, and the springs.
“That first summer I must have floated down the Ichetucknee 10 times.”
Nor did it take long for Blair to establish her artistic niche here.
“I was living in an old house on 7th Avenue” near the Thomas Center, she recalled. “I heard there was going to be an art show and I asked to be in it. They gave me a booth.”
“I ran back to the house, grabbed as many paintings as I could carry and exhibited at my first Santa Fe Spring Arts Festival.”
Blair would ultimately participate in 49 Spring Arts Festivals before Covid forced a three year hiatus. When the festival resumed, this time on Santa Fe’s main campus instead of the Thomas Center, Blair’s work was on display. “I thought that 50 was a nice round number,” she said. “I was thrilled and honored to be an exhibitor again.”
After her first festival exhibit, Blair was invited to teach a landscape painting class at Santa Fe College. An offer she readily accepted…and never mind that “I had never painted a landscape.”
“I quickly painted some landscapes and showed up Monday morning, teaching myself as I was figuring things out. The process was new to me but nobody knew that.”
As a teacher Blair has trained and mentored countless artists, including John James.
A former punter for the Atlanta Falcons who went on to work for UF’s Athletic Association until his retirement, James harbored a passion for painting.
“I took many lessons from Ellie,” he said. “It was like sitting at the foot of the master. For my first still life I painted an NFL football in her studio.”
And not to forget Eleanor Blair urban pioneer.
Downtown Gainesville was still in a fairly decrepit state when Blair sensed an opportunity in the 1980s.
“The quest for a studio is always top of list for any productive artist,” she said. “I walked around downtown and noticed that four out of five Main Street buildings were empty.”
She worked out an arrangement that allowed her and several other artists to move into a building owned by the late Circuit Court Judge Benjamin M. Tench. “There were 8 of us artists, each of us paying $50 a month.”
Eventually, Blair would establish her own Main Street studio in another Tench-owned building, first leasing and then buying it. She would maintain her downtown studio for more than 30 years.
“Eleanor’s studio on South Main Street was a salon of sorts, where people would gather to mingle with other artists,” said former county commissioner, and Blair’s close friend, Robert “Hutch” Hutchinson. “Her many images of Florida’s environment provided an inspiring backdrop for dozens of political candidates who had fundraisers, rallies, or election night parties in her studio.”
And as if to demonstrate that she wasn’t a one-trick pony, Blair for many years played drums in Hutchinson’s rock band Weeds of Eden.
She was “an accomplished musician,” Hutchinson said, “one of the few I’ve met who could read drum music. She also played the penny whistle, clarinet, and was an excellent singer.”
Speaking of performance art, Blair was also known for painting landscapes in real time in front of an audience during several Gainesville Orchestra concerts.
“Most artists can’t work with an audience but I loved it,” she said.
James, who videotaped one of Blair’s performances said “it’s tough to do when you have 1,000 people watching you. Ellie had a basic drawing of the scene she was painting, and she had also been there so she knew what shades” of paints she would need. “But to bring all of that together in a short time is tough. It’s a unique talent.”
Having moved her own parents to Gainesville, and taken care of them during their last years, Blair said she began to think about “what my own long term plan” was when she could no longer live alone.
“Why should I wait until I have to be fork-lifted out of my house?” she joked. “I miss my kids and my grandchildren. So why not make this decision now?”
Her son, Isaac Oster, his wife Tracy O’Hargan and their four-year-old Olive Helen live in Austin. Son Daniel Oster and his wife Christina Cady, live in Ben Lomond, Ca. with 9-year-old Elora and thirteen-year-old Elijah.
More than half a century ago a young woman, on an impulse, jammed herself into an already crowded VW bug. And upon arrival she immediately fell in love with Gainesville.
Now an accomplished artist has departed her beloved city to begin a new chapter of her life.
“I’m still kind of in the letting-go process,” she said. “This has all been a whirlwind experience for me.”
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