Studies In Success

"I always had an interest in drawing when I was a little kid, but I had a lot of interests," Bill Schneider says. "I played sports, did music, a lot of things. So art was just one of them.

"But when I first went to college, I started out as an art major," he admits. "Then I started playing in rock bands and couldn't handle getting up early for the life drawing classes!"

The music won out for most of the next two decades. Schneider, from the Chicago area, played bass with a Midwest psychedelic pop band called One Eyed Jacks -- opening for national acts such as The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, the Hollies and Paul Revere and the Raiders -- and Fat Water, which had a record deal with MGM.

It wasn't until he retired from his second career -- in securities -- that Schneider went back to his first love.

"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans," he says. "John Lennon said that."

Even though he's 69, Schneider is still busy making his mark on the art world, winning best of show and a $1,200 prize at the Artists of Northwest Arkansas exhibition now open at the Arts Center of the Ozarks in Springdale.

"It's actually the fourth 'best of show' I've gotten this year," he says. "It's been a very good year.

"I enter a lot of competitions, probably 15 or 20 competitions a year," says Schneider, who lives in the Village of Lakewood northwest of Chicago, "because I make about a third of my income from winning money in competitions. I win more than my fair share."

Still, Schneider doesn't work to win.

"If I try to paint something I think will sell or somebody else's vision, it never works out very well," he says. "I do probably three or four commissioned portraits a year, but that's always kind of like a boat: The second happiest day is when you buy the boat, but the happiest day is when you get rid of it."

His winning piece at ACO, an oil painting titled "Red Brigade," was created at the Palette and Chisel Club of Chicago. An artist seated next to him later won a prestigious award in the Oil Painters of America national show with his interpretation of the same model, he says.

"It's an image that resonates for some reason."

"Orange and Dove Gray," an oil by Tim Tyler of Bella Vista, is also realistic -- a rendering of a still life of pottery and a tangerine -- and won second place overall in the ANA's 20th annual Regional Art Exhibition.

Like Schneider, Tyler was a child artist.

"I saw a show on Monet when I was 5 -- a black and white television show, as I recall. I knew that's what I wanted to do."

Artists, he says, are "those who never are quite daunted from that original concept. A lot of people have that initial compulsion, but typically they get thwarted by society and end up being engineers and doctors.

"I was an Oklahoma and Arizona kid, who later worked cattle, at an oil refinery, built houses. But when I was off the clock, I would go to my studio and paint. Slowly, if the income becomes sufficient, you can drift away from those day jobs."

Tyler, 55, is also doing more shows than ever -- "because it's time if I'm ever going to. So I just made it a goal for this year. I have eight shows I have to do between now and Jan. 15."

And he's also winning significant prize money -- $700 in this show -- and acclaim.

"Plus," the Bella Vista resident says, "it stirs my name within the local community, so people sort of remember I live here."