Daphne S. Landis is passionate about good art, whether it's realistic or abstract, made of clay or beads, fabric or metal.
Over the years, she's worked with great zeal to encourage emerging artists and create new venues to showcase the diverse talents of this region's artists.
Her latest effort to highlight that diversity is a four-year labor of love: a book titled Speaking for Themselves: The Artists of Southeastern Pennsylvania.
"I did it because I thought it should be done," said the determined octogenarian, who's become "like an icon" of the Chester County art community. "I always felt there was a serious lack of documentation and information about our local artists."
"Everybody knows the Wyeths, but there are so many talented, dedicated artists in this area," said Landis, a native of Australia who moved to Chester County nearly four decades ago and immersed herself in art.
Her book captures a wide range of media, styles and techniques from the bronze sculptures of Martha Jackson Cornwell and the cartoons of Ted Key to the printmaking of Joan Y. McClure and the photography of Michael Kahn.
Using the words and art of dozens of artists, Landis offers a kaleidoscope of ideas and images.
Though she knows many of the 109 featured artists personally and has watched their work develop over the years, she said she wanted them to speak for themselves.
In the book, she's given them space to talk about what motivates and drives them in their craft. And they've spoken eloquently.
John Suplee, who paints familiar Chester County spots, said, "I treasure the remembrance of things dear to me that disappear. Painting is a means of resistance, of consolation."
Kahn, a well-known Chester County photographer who loves historic schooners, explained, "I try to portray slices or vignettes of the subjects I choose to illustrate with film in the hope that the viewer will stop for a moment to imagine the entire scene."
Self-taught watercolorist Kathleen Keane wrote, "Painting is my first love. Painting is who I am, what I do. I paint because I can. It is a gift from God . . . It simply IS."
Landis knows Keane's work well. Keane was one of the artists selected for the Art in Public Places project that Landis spearheaded for unemployed artists in the 1970s. Keane often exhibited at the Chester County Art Association in West Chester, where Landis was a mainstay for years.
