LifeStyle West Magazine- June 2001

George Bernard Shaw hoped he would be thoroughly used up when his time came to depart this world. By those standards, Delafield artist Charles Dix is likely to be around for a long time to come. Since the 1960s, Dix has produced countless original paintings and shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, when a recent serious leg injury kept him from standing at an easel, Dix began working in watercolors, a whole new medium that allowed him to paint while seated. One senses that the man himself is still a work in progress, so it stands to reason that the place he calls home is ever-evolving as well.

Just a stone’s throw from a bustling commercial area in Waukesha County, the Dix home, wrapped in woodland plantings, seems like a northern retreat. Built in 1971, the structure, which serves as Dix’s home, gallery and studio, is a series of cubes that seem to emerge from clefts in the forested hillside. In early spring, hundreds of snowdrops scatter cheerful welcome mats on the forest floor. Later, bloodroot, trillium and Virginia bluebells will brighten the outdoor landscape.

Guests approach the home down a natural path on the lowest of three ground levels and, through an exterior corridor created by thick stacks of firewood (the home has three working fireplaces), enter the gathering space.

The multipurpose space was added in 1985 and serves as a reception area for gallery visitors as well as a living room for Dix and friends. Sculpture in its own right, the room uses the simple lines of comfortable corduroy sofas to create a sense of interior cubes, dividing the room geometrically for conversation, music, contemplating paintings, or drinking in the incredible natural view through the walls of windows on two sides.

“I love this room,” Dix said. “I love looking out on the wild plants. There is a herd of deer out there, turkeys, even a white squirrel. And the birds return every year.”

As in the rest of the home, the emphasis in the gathering room is on the space itself rather than on what fills it. Walls are neutral throughout, forming an unobtrusive backdrop for displayed work. Floors that are not carpeted are concrete, finished with polyurethane over a mottled marble effect Dix discovered quite by accident when workers covered a freshly poured floor with plastic. In this room, Dix is especially fond of several pieces of pottery by Robert Caldert, another local artist.

“I like his things because they are simple,” Dix said. “I’ve never seen anyone use this coppery glaze before.”

Beyond the living room, a spacious area originally intended for storage now serves as another gallery. An unadorned flight of stairs leads to the artist’s bedroom, one of three and the portion of the home currently undergoing remodeling.

“This space is so nice as a gallery,” Dix said of the lower level area, “but, consequently, I don’t have a storeroom.”

The artist’s first award-winning painting hangs in the passageway that leads to the former entrance to the home. Done in 1957, the painting depicts his parent’s home in Dousman and won the high school senior a spot in an annual art calendar contest sponsored by local media.

Like the rest of the staircases in the house, the three wide steps you climb to reach the second ground level are unencumbered with railings and function like bridges. At the top of this staircase is a large display area that offers a choice of directions. To your left, two sets of stairs right angle to the third level. To the right, another staircase leads to the music room, lit with tall windows and a skylight and filled with comfortable seating for listening to the baroque pieces Dix enjoys most.

“The acoustics in this house are fantastic,” Dix said. “You can have one kind of music playing here and another in another part of the house. There is a point at which you can hear both, but you pass through it and can only hear one again.”

The house, Dix said, is full of surprises. In this room, the large rug originally hung in the Chinese pavilion in the 1939 World’s Fair. Friends bought it and eventually gave it to Dix. Beautiful itself, it fits perfectly into a room designed to stimulate intriguing conversation.

“The house holds lots of people,” Dix said. “We’ve had benefits here for over 200.”

From the music room, one can climb another open stairway to another large display area. To the left is a greenhouse-style corridor connecting the space with Dix’s closed-off bedroom-in-progress. The corridor also opens into a larger greenhouse space where Dix grows geraniums, nasturtiums, and other delightful plants that will eventually find a home in one of the gardens on the property. The greenhouse provides a sunny resting place overlooking the woods all year around.

From the other exit from the display room, you can enter the bedroom Dix is currently using. On the third ground level, it overlooks the formal gardens. In late spring, thousands of daffodils put on a “most spectacular display,” Dix said. In early summer, the garden abounds with large German bearded iris as well as Siberian iris, tree peonies, day lilies, Shasta daisies, and more.

“The garden is continuously blooming,” Dix said. “I love working in it. It’s good psychologically.”

The wide windows also afford ample opportunity to sit by the fire and watch the wildlife that meanders through the formal
gardens. Though deer occasionally munch on his flowers, Dix enjoys their visits.

“I’ve learned which plants they like and which they don’t like,” he said. “I miss having certain things in the garden, but it is charming to see them walking through.”

The room also gives Dix an opportunity to ponder the depths of his lifelong career as an artist.

“Art was a tremendous interest since I was born,” he said. “I am mostly self-taught. I did go to some art schools, but you don’t really paint there. You learn other things.”

Though his father built houses and wanted his son to be part of the business, Dix gradually transitioned into being a full-time artist.

“I was fortunate,” he said. “Just out of high school I met influential people who were interested in my work. I started selling and was able to sustain myself.”

Like his home, his work has
gone through many changes. Highly self-motivated, Dix said he likes his own work, enjoys working on more than one style at the same time, and is always storing up ideas and doing drawings even when his health presents challenges.

“It is like reading a novel,” he said. “You want to see what is coming in the next chapter. It is always fascinating.”

In the last year and a half, Dix has returned to showing his work nationally.

“When I built this gallery, I changed my direction to local endeavors,” he said. “Going national again, trying to do things that are really exceptional, adds a great deal of excitement. It is about pushing oneself to see what one is capable of doing. You need to do this to know where you stand.”

A lover of solitude, Dix spends many hours in his home studio which is off-limits to visitors. He usually paints several hours in the morning, breaks for lunch, then paints through an afternoon session. Though it is not his first choice because the light is so different, he occasionally puts in a third work session at night. Dix loves to travel, especially in England and France where he can draw amid castles and country terrain. He also has a studio in
Arizona, a place which has inspired and influenced some of his work.

Though his home may feel unusual to the average nine-to-fiver, it both shelters the artist like a careful womb and perches him precariously in the boughs of imagination. From this vantage point, he can dare to envision “galactic upheavals,” “solar explosions,” “sun-baked planetary landscapes,” and the yet unseen pastels of his healing time.

“Indeed there is not enough time to portray completely the ongoing flow of images,” Dix wrote, unveiling the fuel that drives the visionary who seems still so far from being used up.

The Charles Dix Gallery

P.O. Box 180194, Delafield, Wisconsin USA 53018. 262-968-2357

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