Rowleys Bay Sporting Artist

Photo by Len Villano.

“I’ve always hunted and been around hunting dogs,” Wayne Simmons said, “a natural thing.”

After he graduated from the University of Mississippi at Oxford (William Faulkner’s home town) with a double major in art and English, his father considered what Simmons could do to make a living. “Since you talk about hunting and fishing and little else,” his father said, “you should write about it and illustrate your book.”

Simmons followed that suggestion when he wrote and illustrated The Story of Jules Verne: A Watch Pocket Dog. In this memoir Simmons indulged his Southern heritage as a storyteller recalling his favorite dog that he named Jules Verne, a “watch pocket dog” because the canine was undersized. But the foundling Brittany Spaniel that Simmons’ wife Gay brought home became a large presence in his life, an excellent bird dog and a faithful hunting companion.

The namesake of the dog was not the author of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, at least directly, but rather the childhood comeback of Simmons and his friends to unanswerable questions: “How should I know; I’m not Jules Verne!”

Photo by Len Villano.

In promotions the book is characterized as a young man’s journey over a ten-year span with his once-in-a-lifetime hunting dog. Readers of the book have had nothing but kind things to report, Simmons said, and often share with him their own stories of a favorite dog.

The project was a labor of love. “I wrote the book exactly the way I wanted to,” he said.

But not until he had made a living with his advertising agency in Shreveport, Louisiana, a business that provided him with a creative outlet allowing him to use the writing and artistic skills which he had mastered in college. The account management aspect of the business, however, was less appealing to him, he admitted.

And his ad office was considerably different than the contemporaneous Mad Men agency in New York City. “I don’t recall ever taking a drink in my office!” he laughed. “We were working too hard!”

Twenty-five years ago Simmons and his wife bought a property in Door County as a respite from the work at the agency. “My idea was that one day I’d paint,” he said, “and have a little gallery.”

Photo by Len Villano.

Over the years he and his wife made improvements on the historic farmstead that was once part of the 1870s Rowleys Bay real estate holdings of S. A. Rogers, the farmhouse, with a barn and assorted outbuildings, once serving as a post office.

“It was really in rough shape,” Simmons recalled. “We did a lot of the work ourselves.”

Their remodeling progress is documented with photographs in an album the couple has maintained. The result is a bucolic restoration in a leafy setting that looks as if it has survived nearly 150 years almost untouched. And Simmons’ dream of a studio-gallery has been realized. A half-dozen years ago, he retired from the ad agency to work full-time as an artist.

Unfortunately, Simmons’ father did not survive to see the publication of Jules Verne.

The artist and his wife arrive in Door County each May and depart for Shreveport in November, enjoying the best of both worlds. He had considered living in Door County year round, but remaining one year on the peninsula until December 15 convinced him otherwise. “I had enough of that! The temperature in Shreveport was 65-70 degrees!”

Photo by Len Villano.

He finds the sporting and culinary culture of northern Louisiana the perfect foil to the fine arts milieu of northern Door County.

Simmons’ rural Ellison Bay gallery features original oils, limited edition Giclee prints and lithographs of sporting art that includes dogs, wildlife and landscapes. His work is also available online.

Occasionally the subjects for his sporting art paintings emerge from his own experience, as was the case of a work in progress on the easel in his studio. The artist-hunter was kneeling in the water in a duck blind waiting for ducks to return.

“They came back and flew right at me, and I couldn’t look directly at them because a face shines and they could see me – I had to glance up and shoot!” he explained. “I thought that would make an interesting painting, the reflection of the birds in the water.”

In addition, the artist paints commissioned portraits of people and animals, especially dogs. He generally takes photographs and does preliminary sketches of his subject in preparation for the painting.

“Cairo” by Wayne Simmons.

The dog portraits are especially satisfying for him. “When people hang a painting, that’s great. If they feel a lot for the dog and that [the picture] captures the dog, they are really happy. You have something that’s going to last the rest of your life.”

The secret of a successful portrait, both for people and dogs, he said, lies in the eyes. “If you get the eyes right, the rest falls into place” and the artist captures the personality of the dog.

While he is mostly around sporting dogs, the breed doesn’t matter when it comes to painting. “I like dogs!” he said, and has painted all sorts, from toy poodles to bulldogs.

One of the prints that is popular with dog lovers is called “Rainbow Bridge.” A group of dogs is pictured in a rural “dog heaven” with a Norse legend text by an anonymous author about this special place where well-loved dogs go when they pass away and wait until eventually they will be joined by their human. The print has a cut-out space in the border for the insertion of a remembrance photograph of a special dog.

“Pudel Pointers” by Wayne Simmons.

Simmons undercuts the sentimentality of the print by retelling the quip of one of his friends: “What if this guy calls you and says, ‘I am author unknown and I want to talk to you about royalties!’”

The sporting art of Wayne Simmons has been shown in the Waterfowl Festival Art Fair in Easton Maryland; the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition in Charleston, South Carolina; the Plantation Wildlife Arts Festival in Thomasville, Georgia; and the Dallas Safari Club Convention in Texas.

Visit waynesimmonsart.com for more information and to view his work. Or stop by his gallery at 1375 ZZ (920.854.9469; 318.861.3881) to not only enjoy his work, but his stories as well.