| —  If you take the road out to Funston, turn left onto Church St. once you get in city limits, about a half mile down the road is the studio of an artist, who has captured the essence and spirit of Colquitt County like no other.

Randy Gibbs was raised in  Colquitt County, out behind Spence Field, and grew-up farming like many in this area did. He said his interest in art started at an early age.

“I guess it kind of started as a sibling rivalry,” he said.

He reminisced about a cousin who lived out of town and would visit him. The two of them would go to Crecente’s and get model airplanes to compete against each other in building them. He said as they got older, they would build model ships, take them out to the pond and “battle” by trying to sink each other’s ship with BB guns. He said his cousin also would draw air planes.

What really peaked his interest in drawing, however, he said, was his grandmother’s Audubon book of birds. He said he would take his BB gun and shoot a sparrow  or other bird and bring it back to his house to draw it. This way, he could see how the feathers were attached and how the beak was formed on the bird.

“They never did look like the birds in the book,” he said laughing. He said he did take art in high school, which gave him a chance to work at his drawing and to compare his work with other students in the class.

“I guess there was a little competition in that. ... By then, I kind of had a love for art....as much the visual as the technical part of doing it,” he said.

When he got out of high school, he really wanted to be a veterinarian and went to Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College (ABAC) to pursue it. However, he said, he had not taken chemistry in school and decided that he did not have the aptitude for it. So, he changed his major to art and attended ABAC for two years. Then he attended Valdosta State for a couple of years and was drafted into the United States Army. He said he spent most of his time in the military in the 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg, N.C.

“I gained rank real quick in the Army and the reason was because I could draw,” he said.

He would draw posters, flyers and invitations for them but he still did not feel that he had developed his skills just yet. He also kept a pictorial journal of what he was doing during basic training. At the time, he was only doing pencil drawings, he said.

After he came home from the Army, he said he did a variety of different jobs and never seemed to work anywhere for more than a year or so. He said he had worked at Super X Drugs to Riverside Manufacturing.

“I started cutting trees in the pulpwood business. We bought a farm and I was a cowboy for a little while,” he also added.

He was a heavy equipment operator for about ten years  and digging ponds with a bulldozer was one of the jobs he did.

“I have a few landmarks around,” he said smiling.

He said that since he was raised on a farm, he has always liked doing things with his hands and if he had not been an artist, he would have been in the construction business. He added that had he built his house and his studio.

He said he got really lucky when Woodhaven Plantation in Coolidge was being built because he was asked to paint a picture up in the dome in the skylight of the building.

“And for some reason, they asked me to do. ... And I’ve been doing it ever since. I thought you could never make a living doing this,” he said.

The Woodhaven project gave him his start and he said he was painting in oils and acrylics at the time. Then, he went to a water color class at the Colquitt County Arts Center and promptly switched to watercolors.

“Water colors and pen and ink is all I do now,” he said.

Gibbs explained that he felt with oils or acrylics that he was limited to the color and texture he got with one brush stroke.

“With watercolor, you work a stroke and the colors run and you can get anything. ...I think with watercolors you can do anything you want to do,” he said.

He said he feels that an individual who really appreciates what goes into a painting, will appreciate watercolors more.

“I really think watercolor is a thinking person’s medium more than oil is,” he said.

He felt a lot of what painting with watercolors was, was an unconscious process and the process of remembering how the paint reacted on a certain day, like how it ran or what color it was.

“A lot of times you’ll mix a color and you’ll never get that color again,” he said.

He added that a person really had to keep doing it on a regular basis to improve and maintain their skills.

“I paint almost everyday and I think, everyday, I learn something new,” he said.

Gibbs also said, from his experience and travels, he has found that the art of watercoloring seems to be prevalent in the South. Especially, he said, in Georgia.

“I could spend the rest of my life just doing things in Colquitt County,” he said enthusiastically.

He said he would love to be able to just go out to Reed Bingham State Park and spend about five years out there doing a pictorial book on the park. He added, laughing, that he would love to do this after he stopped “doing art as a full-time job.”

“And it is a full-time job,” he said matter-of-factly.

“One more thing I want to do, before I die, is to paint Noah’s Ark,” he said smiling.

He said, still smiling, if that was his last project and he died right after he signed his name, that was what he wanted to do.

“That’s what I want to go out with,” he laughed.

He said it would be a large painting with all the animals represented but he doesn’t think that he is technically skilled enough to tackle the project just yet.

He said he feels that there are levels that an individual works through and he started at the bottom.  He said at his very first show, which was in Tifton, he was only allowed to enter the hobby and craft division instead of the fine arts division. He said he has entered that show continuously and had never won anything until two years ago. At last year’s competition, he won first place and next year he said he’s shooting for Best In Show.

He said when he goes to a show and gets second place, he is okay with it because he can see what someone did that was better than him. He felt he could learn from his competitor.

“It’s a continuos learning process,” he said sincerely.

He said he does “fight a battle” in his work which is painting for the public versus painting for the judges in a competition.

“What the general public likes and what the judges like is two totally different things,” he said shaking his head.

“If you can’t make people in your hometown, who buy art, happy...,” he continued smiling.

But, last year, he said, he decided to do a few paintings that he just wanted to do for himself. He said he only painted ten or twelve pieces compared to years past where he had done 40 or 80 pieces. He said that two or three years ago, if he worked on a painting for more than three days, that was a long time for him. Last year, he said he worked on a painting for a month.

“I guess I’m getting lazier the older I get. My brain is slowing down,” he laughed.

He said he paints from photographs, art magazines or wildlife magazines. He said he might see a bird and than just build a painting around it.

“I love to have either the real thing in my hand or a photograph to get the detail I want,” he said.

He said if he was painting a piece of machinery, he wanted to be able to go out an look at it and see how it was fitted together. He said he rarely paints on location, though. He said, laughing, that if he went to the beach, he would rather have his fishing pole than his paints and brushes. But, he said, he always packs up his art supplies and takes them even though he has never painted out there.

“I have so much freedom most people don’t have,” he said.

He said he was able to do what he wanted to do because he doesn’t have to report to a job with set hours. He said his wife’s support has contributed to him being able to be a working artist and he really appreciated all of her support over the years.

Artists that he admires are Leonardo da Vinci, Norman Rockwell and John James Audubon. However, he said, it wasn’t one particular person who inspired him to be an artist. He said it was just “something different” that inspired him.

“It’s not necessarily the art. Just a new idea,” he said.

He explained, “You have an idea, and you have a blank piece of white paper, which is nothing within itself, and then the screws start working in your head and you set something on it. You add color and you keep working it and working it. You get halfway through and you think it’s not going to be anything but you keep working it and then you put the last brush stroke in.”

“That’s it,” he exclaimed.

Then, he said laughing, “The screws start working in you head again and you wonder what you’re going to do next.”

He said painting was just something that he needed to do. If he didn’t paint, he would be building something, he said.

“This is what I was intended to do. ... If I see it and I haven’t painted it and it interests me, it will be a painting. ... I don’t know if that’s a philosophy or insanity,” he said laughing.

“Norman Rockwell paints us and this is kind of that ‘us’ feeling,” he said gesturing around his studio, which was filled with portrayals of things specific to Colquitt County and South Georgia.

His paintings have depth to them because he likes to paint “in three layers,” which means there is the main subject and then something in the foreground and background, as well. He said he might wait until he felt he was “technically” ready to tackle a subject but he has never run into something that was too hard for him to achieve.

“You learn something everyday. I think the learning is maybe the inspiration,” he said.

He said he thought that artists were good “problem-solvers” because everything that they had to do in their work was a problem that had to be solved.

When asked what he would tell aspiring artists, he said, laughing, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

Then, seriously, he said, “Do it because you like it and not because you have to.”

Gibbs said he started professionally, as an artist, in 1990, and he had a studio over the old Sportsman on the square, at one time. He said he has enjoyed his studio out at his home a lot better, though. He said he believed his customers seemed to enjoy coming out to his place in Funston. Gibbs also said, jokingly, that he would love to come back a hundred years from now and see one of his paintings on Antiques Road Show. He has painted and drawn everything from the Colquitt County Courthouse and all the local schools to gopher tortoises and farm equipment.

“I’ll never run out of anything to do. As long as I can see and my brain and hands work, I’ll never run out of anything to do,” he said.

He said the ideas of what he can paint or draw, in the community, just keep coming.

Gibbs said he really did not necessarily have a favorite piece that he has done because each is really important to him when he is working on them but when he is finished, he moves on to the next one. He said he really doesn’t get attached to his works.

“They don’t impress me,” he said. “And that’s the truth.”

His daughter, Becky Crawford, works with him by framing all of his pieces, so that he gets to spend his time painting, only.

“It sure has been nice,” said Gibbs.

Crawford was on-hand at the studio and spoke a little bit about her father. She said she and her siblings all draw but she doesn’t have the patience that her dad does. She said she still keeps at it, though, so her works will look as “real” as his. She said her father has given her pointers and tricks to manipulate the colors while she is painting. She said she also lets him critique her work.

“I’ve just kind of taken what he’s given me and done my own thing with it,” she said.

When asked what is was like to live with an artist when she was a child, she said, “He’s really pretty laid back.”

However, she joked that it was only on the outside.

“I have been accused of being laid back for the last 30 years and nobody knows what’s boiling inside me. Being laid back is just an outward appearance,” Gibbs teased her back.

Crawford also said that she had always been “daddy’s girl” and had always tried to do the things that he did. She would “hang-out” at the studio with him, as a child, she said. She lives next door to him and said she still spends all day with him.

“I just caught interest in it because that’s what he was interested in,” she said.

She said she’s really proud of her dad and thought it was really cool to say “Randy Gibbs” and have people know who he is.

Gibbs has sold paintings all over the United States plus China, England, France and Spain.

Gibbs said it “blew his mind” that what he does in “this little spot,” he gestured, could go around the world.

“It’s just what I do,” he said matter-of-factly.

“I really couldn’t imagine anything different,” added Crawford.