Former P&G exec opens eyes with innovative new art form

Jim Hall recently opened the first all-Lineillism show at the Sharonville Fine Arts Gallery. Thirty-six pieces, painted over the last decade, demonstrate a technique that the Cincinnati Enquirer called possibly the first new art form since Pointillism.

But Lineillism is only the latest chapter for Hall, whose 78-year story is a rich tapestry of places and events almost as varied as the hues on his canvases. The story goes something like this:

In the 1940s a young boy on a hardscrabble tobacco farm in Kentucky is encouraged by his teacher to illustrate stories for extra credit. He loves it and starts painting on canvas boards, later saying that his farm must have had more artwork than any other place in Kentucky � but on the outside of buildings, since his father used some of the paintings to patch holes.

He graduates from high school and works briefly as a Church of Christ minister, earning a scholarship to a Bible college in Louisville. But the farm boy, who has never been out of Kentucky, longs to see California. He joins the Navy in a group of recruits destined for San Diego.

After the service, he remains in southern California, where he earns an art degree from UCLA. He lives on Santa Monica Beach, selling his artwork from a lean-to shack that doubles as his home. He experiments with the eccentricities of abstract art, allowing earthworms to wriggle on wet paint and shooting tubes of acrylic with a .22 rifle.

But his creditors suggest he get a real job. He ends up at Procter & Gamble's regional office in LA. The farm boy meets a girl and marries, rises through the ranks and is promoted to the home office in Cincinnati in 1963. He retires in 1991 as advertising manager and opens a studio and gallery near his Sharonville home, calling it Artist-In-Residence.

The birth of an art form

Hall says he playfully told those gathered at his retirement party that Procter & Gamble represented a 35-year interruption in his art career. Nothing could be further from the truth. While at P&G, Hall continued to paint and sell his works.

But that all came to a screeching halt in 1996 when Hall suffered a stroke.

"After having that stroke, I had absolutely no ambition, no creative energy at all to do anything artistic," Hall remembers. "And my wife kind of convinced me to do one Christmas card a year. I'd paint one winter scene or something like that."

Then, in 2000, Hall contracted shingles, which he describes as "the most painful thing I ever went through."

At the end of the third week, something dramatic changed in Hall's brain, he says.

"I started sketching, and writing and painting. It was almost like an epiphany, like I was the smartest person in the world. I was telling my son, 'I can build a carburetor,' and I know nothing about carburetors."

He says the doctor explained the phenomenon this way:

"The right (side of the) brain is your creative side, the left brain is pretty much everything else, and when I had the stroke, my right side -- the tributaries of my (right carotid artery) were blocked -- and it changed things upstairs and switched my left brain and right brain because it had to make room for all that stuff happening. Then, the shingles, which really operate like electric shocks, put them back like they were. And I started at that point seeing things in lines."

Hall says outdoor scenes, television programs � everything -- seemed full of lines. He began to wonder what it would look like to paint that way. He dabbled with straight, vertical lines for a time, finally deciding to create an entire painting in what he would come to call Lineillism. He completed "Outer Banks" on Sept. 11, 2001.

"It was a picture of rocking chairs sitting on a porch looking out over the Outer Banks. I worked maybe a year on it, kept giving up on it, and said to myself 'I really don't even know why I'm doing this any more, it's kind of crazy, and it's also very hard.' And that was my answer: I wanted to do it because it was very hard."

Hall contacted the Miller Gallery in Cincinnati � a fine art dealer with which Hall had an exclusive contract for many years � and asked owner Barbara Miller to convene a group of experts to view the new work.

"So, I took the sheet off and said, 'my only question is has this ever been done before?' And categorically it was 'no, it has not been done before.'"

Innovation as a way of life

The concept of innovation is nothing new to anyone who has worked at P&G, and Hall is thoughtful when asked how his experiences there influenced his approach to art.

"Every brand had what they call a mission statement. Crest's mission statement might be 'Crest will be the most effective, largest selling toothpaste in the world.' When I set up my art studio and my gallery, I had flip charts, and I had my mission statement on it, which was something like 'my art will be the most original, creative art in the world.'"

Hall says another lesson he learned at P&G was that it's OK to make a mistake. In fact, he considers that philosophy an underlying key to innovation.

"The biggest seller P&G ever had came about by mistake," he explains. "And that was Ivory Soap."

A third lesson that Hall has applied to art is that, just as every project within merchandising has a story behind it � one that sales and advertising must understand in order to buy in -- every painting has a story as well.

"Artists love to be asked -- they'll tell you everything you want to know. The more viewers understand the story behind the painting, the more likely they are to enjoy it and buy it."

Looking toward the future

The Sharonville show opened Sept. 24 and, as of last Wednesday, Hall had sold six works � all priced between $1,200 and $350 � much lower than the $3,000 to $4,000 his first few Lineillism works commanded, "mainly because I wanted people to have them."

The exhibition has resulted in publicity he never expected and surprising attention from those outside of Ohio, he says.

Hall plans to continue painting and teaching while working on his third novel. Earlier books � Not Too Far From Eminence and The Forever Group, -- are set in his home state. So is his third, which he says blends his olds stomping grounds with the life of the artist he admires most � Claude Monet.

"It's mostly about Monet reincarnated in this little farm boy in Kentucky," he explains. "And that's kind of fun, because to learn about Monet's life is fantastic."

Considered the father of Impressionism, Monet was the first to paint with short, broken brush strokes using unmixed colors. While now considered one of the most innovative art forms ever conceived, Impressionism was called an abomination by many 19th Century critics.

Now comes Jim Hall. Fortunately, no one is calling Lineillism anything but groundbreaking.