{"id":35780,"date":"2018-02-16T08:17:28","date_gmt":"2018-02-16T14:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=35780"},"modified":"2023-11-25T17:59:54","modified_gmt":"2023-11-25T23:59:54","slug":"phyllis-horne-from-fashion-to-fine-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/phyllis-horne-from-fashion-to-fine-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Phyllis Horne: From Fashion to Fine Art"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>When Phyllis Forsey left for New York City in 1957, she was not headed for The Art Students League like some of her Utah peers. She took a more circuitous route to a painting career.<\/h4>\n

Forsey had just finished her freshman year at BYU, where she had taken several art classes and \u201cpainted the flora and fauna and the figure,\u201d but also realized how much she liked to sew. In a pattern book, she discovered an opportunity to study fashion design back East for a year. (\u201cYou\u2019d never know it to look at me now,\u201d she says with a rueful smile. \u201cI like to be comfortable.\u201d) After talking things over at home in Richfield with her mother, where her father had the Forsey\u2019s Ice Cream plant \u2013 and Phyllis would pitch in summers making popsicles \u2013 she determined to leave.<\/h4>\n

A gutsy move for an LDS girl from a small town in an unknown state, and she indeed felt like a duck out of water for a while around the sophisticated group at the Fashion Academy in NYC. That was until she located a \u201cgreat\u201d ward and, within the week, had an apartment with two roommates. They split the $140 a month rent. She met her husband-to-be, a medical student, at that same great ward and, after finishing her fashion illustration training, Forsey went down to the Garment District and landed a job drawing fur coats. \u201cThen [the owner] found out I could sew, too,\u201d she recalls. That was around 1956. She got married in Salt Lake City in 1958 \u2013 then returned to New York. In all she spent seven years there.<\/h4>\n

She had to stop working for the furrier when Karen came along \u2013 the only artist out of Phyllis Horne\u2019s six children. Karen eventually would open Horne Fine Art in Salt Lake City with husband Michael Rowley, and represent her mother along with other fine artists. The gallery is celebrating its 15th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary tonight, Feb. 16, during Gallery Stroll.<\/h4>\n
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In New York with her fashion illustrations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Phyllis Forsey Horne certainly plans to be there. She overcame a lot of obstacles to become an artist and her paintings of trees and gardens and rural Utah landscapes now hang in numerous public and private collections including the Utah State Art Collection at the Governor\u2019s Mansion, the Salt Lake County Collection, Kennecott Copper, St. Mark\u2019s Hospital, and the Springville Museum of Art Permanent Collection. She exhibited for several years at the Utah \u201cDays of 47\u201d Invitational (where 47 artists were invited to show); and was selected as \u201cOne of the Hundred Most Honored Artists of Utah\u201d by the Cultural Olympiad Curatorial Committee in 2002.<\/h4>\n

Now 80, she has 20 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren \u201cwith another due in April.\u201c Though she and her husband divorced 20 years ago, they remain cordial. \u201cHe was a great supporter of my art, actually,\u201d says Horne. \u201cHe helped me find places to paint. I rented a few studios to do my artwork. I had a place over Benihana for a couple of years. Howard Clark [a painter and owner of an interior design firm who also worked in real estate] let it out to artists and we had five or six in there. You just took an elevator up above the restaurant, smelled the Japanese food and painted,\u201d she recalls. \u201cWe used to have to park at the Salt Palace and pack our stuff over there. It made you feel like you were\u00a0very<\/em>\u00a0serious. Otherwise, I just painted at home.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Home, for the first five years in Utah after a number of years in California, was in Bountiful, where Horne joined the Intermountain Society of Artists with Nancy Lund and Norma Forsberg. \u201cThe Watercolor Society got formed and I was a charter member of that. I signed up to take classes at the new Bountiful Art Center from Edie Roberson and some others. Tony Rasmussen was there then. George Dibble came out and taught a class for two days and it was wonderful. You certainly learned how to loosen up and simplify \u2013 even though I\u2019m a little tight. (I used to have a more impressionistic approach but I\u2019m quite straight-laced now.) You were so grateful when he mentioned your name in his \u2018Tribune\u2019 columns. I sure miss that. A lot of the artists do. But those days are gone, I\u2019m afraid.\u201d<\/h4>\n
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Horne had taken watercolor and oil classes at BYU, followed by some adult education classes in California, when they were stationed there in the military. \u201cI had a lot of little things to develop my knowledge,\u201d she says. \u201cI even took The Famous Artists Course.\u201d She accomplished this by sending in a ubiquitous test from the back of a magazine with a sketch of a dog that said, \u201cCan You Draw This?\u201d Because they moved so much due to her husband\u2019s medical profession, she took five years to complete the 3-year course from the Famous Artists School in Westport, Conn. Founded by Albert Dorne and Norman Rockwell with faculty including Ben Shahn, Al Capp, Milt Caniff, Rube Goldberg, Ben Stahl and others, Horne recalls that \u201cit was well-organized. They\u2019d send you a lesson; you\u2019d do it and send it back. I still have those lesson books. I refer to them on odds and ends. I used to take \u2018Southwest Art\u2019 magazine and I would notice now and then someone would take Famous Artists and I would say, \u2018Good for you!\u2019 It was important because I was a homemaker and studying at home.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Karen Horne recalls that her mother\u2019s small studio was next to the laundry room \u2013 and laundry was going all the time in that large household. Still, Phyllis made time to paint.<\/h4>\n

Horne always liked to draw and paint a bit \u2013 even had a drawing in the newspaper when she was 12 \u2013 but never took herself seriously because she was raising a family. \u201cIn New York I got information out of magazines for watercolors because I was raising two children by then \u2013 my oldest son was born there, too. At BYU I was a little na\u00efve, I didn\u2019t want to study art history, I wanted to PAINT. We had original art in our home growing up and I always enjoyed that but I never made the connection that I would be doing this professionally, that kind of came later.\u201d<\/h4>\n
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When Horne first displayed her art in the \u201870s it was a painting of some dolls that she entered into a Mother of the Year competition. She won the state and a first-place national award of a thousand dollars (and got to make another trip to New York). \u201cMy first big prize. That got me really rolling. It was not the kind of painting that wins prizes \u2013 it was sort of sentimental \u2013 but I still have it and the dolls, too. I collect dolls. And jigsaw puzzles, the hardest ones I can find. I collect Flo-Blue dinnerware from the \u201880s,\u201d she continues. \u201cMy mother was an antique collector. Pioneer-ware. I thought she was out of her mind. And now I do the same thing,\u201d she says with a laugh. Horne adds that art stores were always like candy stores for her with the different paints and brushes and the watercolor paper. \u201cI don\u2019t do watercolor anymore and I\u2019ve got tons of watercolor paper sitting there.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Her lone experience with acrylic was a sign she painted for her older sister\u2019s beauty shop. Her other sister taught grade school and her brother ran the ice cream plant after her father retired. \u201cHe finally sold out \u2013 it was hard to compete with Carnation and Meadow Gold. You either had to [modernize] or part with it. So he ended up selling insurance,\u201d says Horne.<\/h4>\n

In 1981 Dave Ericson had Phyllis Horne\u2019s first one-person show. \u201cI\u2019d only shown with a group before that,\u201d she remembers. Her career took off from there.<\/h4>\n

She \u201csort of\u201d paints from photographs, something she did more often with her Nikon and telephoto lens. She doesn\u2019t do well with digital, she says. \u201cBut being a Realist I have to get a start from something. It\u2019s usually my own composition on the photograph, but the paintings take on a life of their own after a while and I get a totally different scene,\u201d says Horne. \u201cI get a lot of hollyhocks from my imagination because I\u2019ve painted so many of them,\u201c she says, laughing.<\/h4>\n
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Painting at Jackson Hole.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve painted outdoors, but I don\u2019t get a finished composition that way. Sometimes I\u2019ll develop it, but not always.\u201d She has done quite a few paintings in Victor, Idaho, in the Jackson Hole area. \u201cI usually work in watercolor there because it\u2019s easy to haul around,\u201d she says. But her primary medium, really her only medium, is oil. \u201cSo I paint a lot at home. Karen\u2019s very cautious with masks and gloves and so forth. Me, I\u2019m still here, but I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve ruined my health or not.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Horne doesn\u2019t go to Watercolor Society anymore. \u201cBecause I\u2019ve lost so many friends, some older than me and some younger. We do kind of come and go.\u201d And she doesn\u2019t do Facebook. \u201cI\u2019ve stayed away from all of it. I just don\u2019t want to go around looking down. I\u2019ve got to look up at the clouds. I want to see the skyline. I just have to be looking around,\u201d she says.<\/h4>\n

\u201c15th<\/sup>\u00a0Anniversary Celebration\u201d with Phyllis Horne and other artists,\u00a0Horne Fine Art<\/a>, Salt Lake City, Gallery Stroll reception, Friday, Feb. 16, 5-9 p.m.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Phyllis Forsey left for New York City in 1957, she was not headed for The Art Students League like some of her Utah peers. She took a more circuitous route to a painting career. Forsey had just finished her freshman year at BYU, where she had taken […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":844,"featured_media":37147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[556,1383],"class_list":["post-35780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-horne-fine-art","tag-phyllis-horne"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/phyllis_horne-534x800-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 03:30:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35780"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72328,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35780\/revisions\/72328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}