“Icons of Port O’Connor” - oil painting by Virginia Lichac
“Spend some time in Port O’Connor, Texas and you will experience a colorful array of places to see and fun times. Fish, swim, picnic, bird watch, dine, take nature walks and kick back in all the glory of this eclectic little town on the Texas Gulf Coast! The ‘End of the Road’ is the beginning of an adventure like nowhere else. A rich historical past adds to the pleasure of vacationing and living in POC – an iconic treasure which has something for everyone!”
Although the above quote could be an excellent promotion piece for the Port O’Connor Chamber of Commerce, it is actually from local artist Virginia Lichac, describing her painting “Icons of Port O’Connor” that she painted especially for the 2012 CCA annual fund raiser. “This was my third year to donate a painting for the fund raiser. The first year it was in the raffle; the next was placed in the silent auction, and this time my art moved up to the live auction. Well, to say the least, it was a thrill to have it sell for a whopping $1,150,” she said.
Virginia began painting in 1991 and exhibited her works in her office at the University of California-Santa Cruz, where several who viewed them commissioned paintings from her. Through the years she has sold about 50 paintings, but she says, “I really don’t paint with the idea of selling something; I do it for my own joy.”
She prefers large canvasses to small, prefers oil paint because it is ‘more fluid’, but does use other mediums as well. She paints various styles, including portraits, but calls her preferred style “expressionist”, using lots of color, distortion and exaggeration.
Virginia in her studio
While living in California, Virginia and husband Jerry did a lot of traveling. Their first trip to the Texas Gulf Coast was to Corpus Christi and South Padre Island. They liked the warmer weather here and when they decided it was time to move, they found Port O’Connor.
“When we first came into town, Jerry said, ‘I think this is it’,” she said. “It felt so spacious here.” The couple designed their own house; gave Mike Marshall the task of building it, and returned to California. They moved here in February of 2009.
“I love the community and the things that go on here,” Virginia says. In addition to the CCA, she is involved in the Service Club, Chamber of Commerce, and Friends of the Library. Especially rewarding to her is being able to participate on a personal level with the wounded warriors of Warrior’s Weekend.
Virginia is also a member of the Port Lavaca Art Guild and exhibited a cloth wall hanging in their recent Arts-Crafts-Antiques Festival by the Bay. The wall hanging was a smaller rendition of the 8’X8’ barn quilt she made for her daughter’s barn in Tennessee.
Barn quilts, a popular art form in Tennessee, are mounted on the sides of vintage barns and other outbuildings throughout the area. Virginia’s barn quilt was composed of 36 14” Hardiboard tiles and depicts her daughter and son-in-law’s goal to have a working farm, raising their own cows, pigs, and sheep and growing their own vegetables and fruits. The weather-resistant barn quilt was done using outdoor acrylics.
Wall hanging similar to the original "barn quilt"
Fifty-five Frolicking Fish by Virginia Lichac
