Faith Krucina's vivid paintings of jazz musicians can be found in her easily overlooked local gallery - as well as the walls of museums and celebrities' homes.

[Times photo: Jill Sagers]
Faith Krucina stands in front of some of her artwork at her two-story Dunedin gallery, Artistic Impressions International.

By EILEEN SCHULTE

DUNEDIN -- When Faith Krucina was 5 years old, she would paint colorful, sweeping designs all over the white walls of her mother's small Chicago apartment.

Instead of scolding her and scrubbing the childish drawings off, her mother, artist and freelance reporter Ruth Coddington, would simply let her do it.

"At some point, she would repaint the walls and I would start over," Krucina said.

The two of them lived alone in the big city, and they took full advantage of its cultural treasures. They would spend hours going to the ballet, the opera and the Goodman Theater.

Once when she was 8, she was visiting the Chicago Art Institute and walked up and caressed a Van Gogh, actually putting her fingers on the canvas.

"I didn't know any better," said Krucina, 59, laughing.

Now people want to touch Krucina's paintings, her bold, impressionistic football players, New York landscapes and especially her jazz players that line the walls of her two-story downtown Dunedin gallery, Artistic Impressions International.

She said some of her original works are in the permanent collections of the International Jazz Hall of Fame and the VH-1/MTV corporate office gallery in New York. Matt Lauer owns one. So does Clint Eastwood, Bobby Knight, Victor Borge and former President and Mrs. George Bush.

Maybe Lance Levy will be next.

"It's very striking. It's wild the way it jumps out at you," said Levy, a customer who was admiring a sun-streaked painting called In My Mind's Eye, a greenish picture of the Everglades.

Levy, who was at the gallery with his wife looking for art to decorate a new house, said he lives in Safety Harbor and drives up and down Bayshore Boulevard all the time, but never realized Krucina's gallery was there in the Douglas Village area.

"I thought it was a business park," he said.

That's the problem, she said. She's been at the gallery for 17 months but few people know about it. In a span of two hours Monday, only four people walked in.

"They know me in Europe, but not in Dunedin," Krucina said, laughing.

She said she was drawn to painting jazz figures after attending a performance by the Urban Knights at the Mahaffey Theater in September 1996. Ramsey Lewis was on piano, Art Porter was playing sax.

"I was sitting three rows back, slightly left of center stage," Krucina said. "I could see every nuance of expression on Ramsey Lewis' face. He has a magnificently chiseled face. When you watch him play the piano, he emanates joy and passion. I'm watching fire come from his eyes. And Art Porter caressing the horn. I could sense their spirits. I'm sucking all this in."

Later, she made a trip to Preservation Hall in New Orleans, "a dark little hole in the wall, the womb of jazz legends," she said, and was hooked.

"To me, it is a house of worship of jazz," Krucina said. "I sat in front of the musicians. They were talking with their eyes. You could see the beads of sweat. I was studying the perspiration and obviously the shapes, and I'm sure it was my imagination, but I could see steam coming from their instruments."

When she returned from New Orleans, she fell into an altered state of consciousness she calls "The Zone" and painted non-stop for four days, stopping only to catch a few hours of sleep or a snack.

"They're very physical," she said. "I call it dancing on the canvas."

The result was an eccentric collection in which viewers "can see the music, hear the music," she said.

When Krucina, a former public schoolteacher, isn't at her gallery, she is at her school, Anchor Academy, a small Dunedin school she founded in 1987. She started the school to offer bright, creative children, and also children with special needs, a solid education in a supportive environment, she said.

She lives in Dunedin with her husband, Joe, 54. Her son Bruce, 35, works at the gallery.

Eleven of her works are on display in Deventer, Holland.

"They've been traveling in Europe," she said, laughing.

If you go

Faith Krucina's artwork is on display at her gallery, Artistic Impressions International, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday at 731 Broadway, Dunedin, or by appointment. For information, call (727) 738-2787.

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