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"...His Eyes, How they Twinkled"

Amarillo Artist Paints the Real Face of Santa

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Celia Meadors knew she had talent at seven years old, when her drawing of Wilda, the French poodle who only understood French, captured the attention of her teacher. The dog belonged to her older sister, Jean, and her Parisian husband, Jack, and was groomed in the Royal Dutch style. It seemed as though no one in Celia’s hometown of Wellington had ever seen such a dog.

“At Christmas, my mother had all of my class over to our house to listen to ‘A Christmas Carol’ on the record player,” Celia recalls. “And when my teacher saw the drawing I’d done, she was so shocked because she’d never seen a dog like that. I knew then that there was a right way and a wrong way to draw.”

Specifically, Celia looked at facial features, like a person’s nose, and wondered why others drew noses in the shape of a checkmark when it was clear to her that noses were more detailed than that. By the second grade, Celia was taking art classes after school and, as her artistry and interest grew, ended up taking whatever class was offered in Wellington. When Celia was 12 years old she and her pal, Patricia, started three years of lessons with an art teacher who traveled the Panhandle.

Celia was 17 years old when her father passed away and her uncle stepped into the role of handling her education. Though she was determined to continue studying art, her uncle had other ideas.

“He actually told me that I was not to major in Art because they didn’t want me to be a starving artist,” she laughs. Celia began her college career at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. “He said I should study education, but I knew that’s not what I wanted. What I did do was major in journalism and on the sly, for my electives, I continued to take painting.”

The journalism focus appeased her uncle, who was the Capital reporter for the Houston Chronicle in Austin, but considering Celia didn’t want to conduct interviews, she knew it wasn’t going to work out. Celia took a break from school, married Ben Meadors in 1964, and no longer had to consult anyone on the choices she made regarding her education. In fact, Celia went back to school in 1966 and graduated from West Texas A&M State University in August 1970 with a degree in Fine Arts.

In between school sessions, Celia taught in the public school systems in Dotson and Stratford while her husband worked at various Ford dealerships in the Panhandle. She also taught painting classes at a number of craft shops.

“Portraits are my specialty. I just really like faces, especially animated, character faces. I wasn’t really interested in backgrounds or landscapes so portraits remained my focus,” she says. “When you graduate, you have to have a following to be able to make it as a studio artist, and I really didn’t think I could do that.”

By 1985, Celia was onto something. She was a faithful art show attendee doing quick sketches and caricatures, something that she has done since she was a senior at WT. Her talent has been especially helpful to the Amarillo Police Department, as she’s done composite sketches for them for more than 30 years. However, Celia was still looking for her niche and a friend of hers with the Amarillo Independent School District gave her an idea.

“Jeryl Vance, who used to be the head of the art department at AISD, said to me, ‘If I could paint faces as well as you can, I would paint drippy Indians,’” says Celia. “At the time, we were struggling financially and I knew I had to make my degree work. So I went home and tried this method. I took 15 pieces to a show and sold them all, so from that point on, that’s what I did. Until about 1991, I painted mountain Indians.”

By method, Celia means that she treats her oil paint in a watercolor method, something that caught the eye of other artists in town when her pieces were on display at a show. The big break, however, occurred at Christmas Roundup in 1991, an annual art show and auction sponsored by the Art Alliance and the Symphony Guild.

“I knew I needed to do a piece for the show and I’d waited too long to do it. I had to do a 4 by 6-foot piece and it was due in three weeks. I knew the only way I’d get it done was if I used this drip method, so I painted a Santa Claus and it went at auction for $1000,” she says. “I knew then that I’d developed something sellable.”

Boy, did she. Her Santa Claus paintings are well known in Amarillo, as Celia has shown her artwork in every Roundup in the last decade. When her husband, Ben, died four years ago, Celia threw herself into work. Her husband was not only her business partner and father of their two children, RayAnn and Andy, but he was also her biggest fan. Celia knows it would’ve disappointed him had she stopped painting upon his passing.

Her niche holiday art is not only a beloved keepsake for locals who get their pieces personalized with family names, but has also recently been given national attention. Celia’s art was noticed at the Christmas Affair show in Austin last November and consequently picked up by Farrisilk Inc., a Christmas décor and textiles company in Placentia, California. This season, Celia’s work will be shown at the Atlanta and Dallas markets, as well as at a Farrisilk home show in Placentia.

“This is the first time my stuff has been picked up nationally. I’m hopeful, yet cautious,” she says. “You have to have something you’re known for, and if this is what I’m known for, that’s okay. I love what I do.” Despite the larger possibilities, Celia still travels to art shows in Austin, Lubbock, Canadian, Santa Fe and other cities in the region.

To Celia, the key to selling her Santa paintings are making them personal with names. Her busy season is June to November, when it takes listening to Christmas music all summer to get her in the mood. Celia displays her holiday pieces at two frame shops in town, The Right Angle and Arden’s of Amarillo, starting each November, so come January, she takes a much needed break.

For her holiday collection, she may get ideas from a variety of things she seen, or even from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade from the previous year. But the face of Santa, she says, is entirely her own idea.

“I’ve done a profile of him, I’ve painted him as a gingerbread baker, and last year I did a Texan Santa,” says Celia. “I love hearing people go by my booth saying, ‘That’s what Santa Claus looked like when I was a kid,’ or ‘That’s what he really looks like.’”

“A lot of times you see him with blue eyes, but I’ve always said my own personal Santa Claus’s eyes are brown,” she continues. “This is my version of Santa. This is what he looks like in my mind.”

by Jennie Treadway-Miller

Jennie was a columnist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press for eight years prior to moving to Amarillo in 2008. She is an avid reader, runner and writer.

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