the still water, bugs were gliding. The water striders were long-legged critters whose miniscule feet barely skimmed the water. “Jesus bugs” Charley had heard them called. He’d been to Sunday School where he’d heard that Jesus—just like these graceful bugs—had walked on water. Their balancing act would have been enough to impress any observant young boy, but Charley had noticed something more: shadows. The sun’s rays filtered through the shallow water and the bugs’ narrow bodies left shadows on the creekbed. Add fascinating circles where the bugs’ feet touched the surface, and the result was something Charley could have examined for hours.
Many years later, Charley would recreate those lines and circles in a painting he called Jesus Bugs.
JESUS BUGS
When asked if he had a favorite painting, Charley always answered Jesus Bugs. His earliest memories of these surface-skating insects are also his earliest memories of connecting with nature.
Courtesy of Charley Harper Art Studio. Photo by Ross Van Pelt-RVP Photography
Baby Charley with his two older sisters, Ruth and Reta.
Courtesy of Charley Harper Art Studio
Charley didn’t like farming very much, and he knew that from a very young age.2 Despite this, he always looked back on his childhood in Upshur County, West Virginia, with fond memories. As a boy, Charley attended reunions and Sunday church services with his family. The Harpers made trips to town in an old Ford Model T car. The children went sledding in the winter. In the springtime, while roaming the hills near his home, Charley learned to appreciate the trilling sound of spring peepers. The song of the small chorus frog would always remind him of home.
When Charley’s family sold the farm and moved into the small town of French Creek, Charley’s father ran a feed store, above which the family lived. French Creek itself ran right through town, and Charley spent a great deal of time fishing there, using crayfish from the creek as bait.
Charley attended a three-room schoolhouse where, when he was in the fourth grade, he discovered that he could draw better than anyone else in his class. It was the only thing he could do better than his peers, he said. He was a good student, but he quickly figured out that he could get even better grades in both English and history if he added a few illustrations to his homework papers. Charley liked to tell the story of how he once saved his history grade by drawing all the presidents.
Charley’s grade-school report card contained marks for reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, geography, and hygiene. The line for “Drawing” remained blank all year, as art was not taught in his school.
Courtesy of Charley Harper Art Studio
Charley (front row, fourth from the left) with his classmates in front of Frenchton School in West Virginia.
Courtesy of Charley Harper Art Studio
Charley attended Buckhannon-Upshur High School, nine miles north of French Creek. There his fondness for art and his confusion regarding his future grew. He knew he didn’t want to be a farmer or run his father’s feed store, but no one he knew had actually made a living as an artist.3 As not a single art class was offered in school, Charley enrolled in a correspondence course in cartooning. Assignments were mailed to him, and he’d send back his work for evaluation.
Charley must have enjoyed learning to draw cartoons. He put his skills to good use, sketching all of his classmates—including two who refused to pose.
By the time he graduated from high school in 1939, Charley had decided that it didn’t matter if he was the only artist he knew. He was going to choose art as a career.
Feedback from Charley’s correspondence school instructor says, “Good work,” and, “Legs are too long for donkey.”
Courtesy of Charley Harper Art Studio. Photo by Ross Van Pelt-RVP Photography
Charley put his cartooning skills to good use with these caricatures of each member of the Buckhannon-Upshur High School Class of 1939.
Images courtesy of the Upshur County Historical Society, Buckhannon, West Virginia
In 1939, Charley graduated from Buckhannon-Upshur High School, which he affectionately called “Buck-Up High.” Courtesy of Charley Harper Art Studio
That fall, Charley enrolled at West Virginia Wesleyan College, located in Buckhannon. He was pleased to find that art classes were offered, but disappointed when he realized that most of his time would be spent copying calendar pictures.4 He had hoped he would learn the basics of drawing and study the masters of fine art. Once, Charley left a diary he was required to keep for his freshman English class in the art room. His art instructor, Lita Snodgrass, found it and read that Charley didn’t think she was a very good teacher and that he felt he likely knew more about art than she did. If Ms. Snodgrass had taken offense at his comments, Charley’s art career may have ended right then and there. But she had seen Charley’s talent and, in Charley’s words, she “forgave me very gallantly.”5 It was Lita Snodgrass who first suggested Charley consider attending the Art Academy of Cincinnati, a well-regarded institution 300 miles to the west.
Charley (center) and Edie (right) spent many hours sketching and painting together while attending the Art Academy of Cincinnati.
Courtesy of Charley Harper Art Studio
To a West Virginia farm boy, the big city of Cincinnati, Ohio, seemed quite far from home. To his parents, it must have seemed even farther. Though he had great respect for the people of French Creek and Buckhannon, Charley felt that no one there truly understood his life’s goals. His father, certainly, couldn’t imagine why his son would want to leave the small town, and his mother cried when he left by train in September 1940.6
It didn’t take long for Charley to find someone who did understand him. On his first day of class at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, he made a friend. Her name was Edith McKee, and she was an only child whose family lived in Roselawn, a Cincinnati suburb. Charley soon became a frequent dinner guest at the McKee house. He enjoyed the home-cooked meals, and Mr. and Mrs. McKee seemed to understand Charley’s desire to be an artist in a way his own mother and father hadn’t. Perhaps it was because their own daughter, whom everyone called Edie, shared similar ambitions. Eventually, Edie made the trip to West Virginia
