83-year-old Springfield painter Jerry Maxfield went to his first exhibition

Jerry Maxfield began painting in 1959, experimenting with oils during his college years.

Then he took a 28-year break.

When his sons, Tracy and Shawn, left the nest in the mid-1980s, it was time for a change. Maxfield’s wife, Kay, earned a master’s degree in education, while Jerry worked in sales and took watercolor classes at night.

He added his name and date to his images. The last one was in 1989.

In 2023, Maxfield picked up the paintbrush again.

On July 2, you can see him for the first time — as a headline artist — at Tea Bar & Bites Bakery and Café in Springfield.

He is 83 years old.

Discovering art is still life painting

Maxfield draws attention to a painting he did in the 1980s—a still life of a teapot and three cups. But his realistic style has morphed into whimsical works.

Why did he try to paint again after 34 years?

“I don’t know,” Maxfield said. “Probably Tracy said, ‘Why don’t you paint a picture?’”

“I encouraged him, but I didn’t push him on it,” said his son Tracy, 60. “I mentioned it a few times, so I was really surprised when he started painting again.”

Tracy Maxfield recalled that his dad painted “all the time” while his mom was away at graduate school.

But first, let’s go back to 1959.

“I started when I was 19, using borrowed supplies of oils,” Jerry Maxfield said. “And drinking too much beer.”

He was raised in Wichita, Kansas and briefly attended college. He then joined the U.S. Army Reserves with a friend and completed basic training at Fort Leonard Wood.

“I left, took another job and never saw him again. He got pneumonia,” Maxfield said.

Worst job? Bending springs for a Boeing subcontractor in Wichita. But he married Kay and soon had Shawn and Tracy, so they had to make do.

Professional life with art on the margin

Kay’s jobs included working as Larry Mueller’s secretary at the Paul Mueller Company. According to her widower, she started at the bottom and was promoted to a management position within weeks.

“She was extremely intelligent and a natural teacher,” Maxfield said.

Kay Maxfield eventually moved into education and taught earth sciences in Springfield public schools—primarily at Central High School—until 2005.

Jerry Maxfield worked in sales for Celotex, a national manufacturer of building materials, insulation, roofing and drywall.

“Heavy stuff,” he said. “And not very glamorous.”

But he could do it and he could sell it.

“I’ve been in sales since I was 16,” Maxfield said.

In the mid-1980s, when Shawn and Tracy were single and Kay was in college, Jerry Maxfield took up watercolor painting. He spent his evenings taking night classes at the former Southwest Missouri State University.

“I was the only guy who really wanted to paint a good picture,” Maxfield said.

The remaining students were only worried about passing or failing grades, he added.

He also took classes at the Springfield Art Museum.

Celotex then doubled his territory and responsibilities. He signed and dated his last painting in 1989, and then put down the brush.

After leaving Celotex in 2000, Maxfield worked a few jobs. His favorite was at Liberty Advertising and Marketing, where he sold what he called “bits and bobs”—coasters, pens, and other promotional items. He worked with friends.

Then, around Christmas 2015, Kay was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Maxfield cared for her until her death in July 2016.

Seven years later he picked up the brush again.

He started with a turtle.

“A bit wrong”‘

Currently, there are dozens of works hanging on Maxfield’s walls. He is currently considering which of the 12 or so to show at his first exhibition in July.

“It all starts with a sketch,” Maxfield said.

On his easel he shows a drawing of a woman with glasses, looking dazed.

“I’m pretty happy with it,” he said. “I have another one under construction that I can’t quite get my hands on. But I won’t keep it up.”

The woman was Kate Murr, a poet he had met at a wedding. She wrote custom poetry on a turquoise 1967 Smith Corona Super Sterling typewriter. She had seen Tracy and Jerry and admired their father-son bond.

“When I see them,” Murr said, “I always think, ‘Oh, they’re best friends. How nice is it to be able to share so many things with each other?»

They talked about art, and Murr wrote a poem for Tracy. Jerry asked if I could take a photo.

“I had seen her before,” Maxfield said, “and I thought, ‘That’s an interesting face.’ So I took three pictures of her, and she was very nice.

Maxfield in his sketches and paintings does not seek to create exact replicas, but rather to create whimsical imitations.

“I don’t even consciously try to do that,” he said. “It’s just what I do, and it turns out they’re a little off, I will say.”

“I build stories in my head‘

“And sometimes it makes me laugh,” he said. “I’m constructing an image, in a sense, but I’m also constructing a story.”

It begins with a picture, a drawing, a vision in his mind. Sometimes the Muse awakens him.

“I wake up at about 2 a.m. and something makes me laugh or something just won’t go away,” he said. “So I’ll come in here and do a sketch and then finish it later.”

He says it doesn’t happen as often as it used to, but when he started painting again last year, he would wake up almost every night with ideas and quickly get out of bed to write them down.

Sometimes he solves a few crosswords first.

“When I sketch something, I don’t know what the end result will be. I know it’s going to be a barn or a dog or, you know, whatever. But I don’t know the colors.”

Tracy Maxfield said his dad’s move toward whimsical painting came as a surprise, considering Jerry’s attention to detail.

“His paintings became a lot more carefree,” Tracy said. “They are much more open to interpretation, but he puts a lot of thought and effort into his work.”

Tracy, a neuromuscular therapist and pilates instructor, has a surprising explanation. Father and son spent years studying under Erin Owens, an expert in using movement to create new neural pathways in the brain.

Or as Tracy said, moving on to “upgrading your brain.”

Jerry recently refreshed his understanding of how the brain moves. Both he and his son, Tracy, exercise regularly.

“I believe his freer, more playful, more whimsical artwork is a manifestation of his efforts to improve his brain on a daily basis,” said Tracy Maxfield.

Supply and demand for the art of Jerry Maxfield

When Jerry Maxfield returned to painting in 2023, he was shocked to find that his paints were still usable. Since the National Art Shop has closed, he now buys fresh paint from Michael. He keeps the thin tubes in a small Tupperware box.

“Here are my current stocks,” he said. “Some of them are over 30 years old, but they’re still good.”

He prefers orange and turquoise, but said the color tone will change from one side of the painting to the other.

“Anyway, just try it, depending on how much water you want,” he said.

Fortunately, Maxfield had worked as a paint matcher many years ago. At the time, he wrote a formula that allowed the company to calculate the cost of producing 10,000 gallons of a single color combination.

His pallet board is an old refrigerator tray that he bought at a flea market 30 years ago on the advice of his late art teacher, Bill Senter.

Dragons, Monsters, and Geometry; Oh My!

Points to the image:

“When you figure it out, let me know,” Maxfield said.

A friend sent a photo of a lighthouse, so Maxfield painted one. Then he added a geometric pattern.

“I did it as a kid — hundreds of times,” he said. “It was fascinating to me because it’s all straight lines, but you can see the curves.”

Last year, his hairdresser swapped out a few hairstyles for a painting of a giraffe and then a dragon for her boyfriend.

“They’re dragons—which don’t exist—so you can’t draw them wrong,” Maxfield said with a smile. “You’re 100 percent right, no matter how you draw them.”

He added a creature resembling a stegosaurus.

“It just got there,” Maxfield said. “What I came up with was maybe Nessie – emerging and heading back into that sea that is dark blue-gray.”

Active “retirement”

When Maxfield isn’t painting, he’s probably riding his bike. He rides a recumbent bike in the winter and a mountain bike during the other three seasons.

Maxfield attends West Coast Swing dance classes every week and goes to rehearsals with Tracy and friends.

“That would be pretty cool for me because he has a bunch of dancing friends,” Jerry Maxfield said. “I’ve always danced, but not as much West Coast Swing as they do, but I’m pretty good at it now.”

He cooks. He does pilates.

“He dedicated his retirement to personal development,” Tracy Maxfield said.

He still has a lot to learn considering he doesn’t appear to be aging.

“He’s fantastic,” Tracy said. “When you upgrade your brain, you basically get younger, and I think his work looks like he’s actually getting younger.”

“I spent very little time just doing nothing,” Jerry Maxfield said.

Jerry Maxfield’s work will be on display in July at Tea Bar & Bites Bakery and Café. It will also be part of the First Friday Art Walk.