PEORIA MAGAZINE April 2022

A R T S A N D E N T E R T A I N M E N T

‘ARTISTS DON’T RETIRE’ Painter/sculptor Lonnie Stewart is as in demand as ever

BY MIKE BAILEY PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIKE BAILEY

A t age 75, artist Lonnie Stewart is emphatic about one thing. OK, maybe many things, but on this in particular:. “Artists don’t retire,” he said recently at his rural Washington studio, surrounded by an approving gallery of his clay subjects. “We don’t get out on the golf course.” It has been a year of interruption – some health issues including COVID, a fall and fractured vertebra – and reflection for Stewart, not that he has the luxury of spending too much time on the latter. “Sometimes I think, wouldn’t it be nice to take a month off and read and sketch?” he says. Alas, “I’m so worried I won’t get to do everything I want to do in art.” Case in point is the dream he’s been pursuing for more than two decades, populating the Illinois River from top to bottom, from Chicago to St. Louis, with a series of towering monuments of the French explorers who settled Illinois and the Native Americans who were here first. For Stewart it would be the capstone on an illustrious career that has counted the likes of Mother Teresa, Lady Diana and Pope John Paul II among those he’s met and counted as subjects of his work. “I’m going to finish the whole series” of models, 13 in all – fromHenri de Tonti, who was so instrumental in putting what would become Peoria on the map, to LaSalle and Jolliet, from the Ottawa chief –Pontiac – to the Iroquoiswarriors

The 26th president

Iroquois warrior, in progress

has long inspired him, and he spoke of Egypt being in his travel plans – but he remains fascinated by the Illinois River, how its valley was carved by a freakish act of nature known as the Kankakee Torrent, how its history is as riveting as anything a playwright could dream up. And why shouldn’t he?

who bounced between cooperation and conflict with the European traders and trespassers. “Somany people don’t knowthe history of all these French explorers. They’ve lived with the names all their lives but they don’t knowwho theywere,” Stewart said. “I love what I’m doing with this,”

“I’M SO WORRIED I WON’T GET TO DO EVERYTHING I WANT TO DO WITH ART”

Lonnie Stewart

even if “someone else has to pick up the ball” to see it to completion. “It’s been a real adventure.” Stewart has traveled the world – he was leaving for Charleston, S.C. the day after this conversation, a city that

Stewart is a son of central Illinois – he grew up in tiny Delong, just outside Galesburg – and while he has left to pursue his ambitions, he always returns. The Art Institute of Chicago lured him away, then New York where he fed

APRIL 2022 PEORIA MAGAZINE 35