Painter captures Key West’s charms, characters in new exhibit

Artist Andy Thurber has retired from his day job and moved away from his native Key West.

At age 56, Thurber and his wife moved to Micanopy, Fla., about 22 miles south of Gainesville, where he can now paint full-time in his home studio in the rural river town.

“I really only left in body,” said Thurber, who for more than 20 years worked in maintenance at a Key West credit union, becoming facility director, while learning the art of watercolors he now uses to capture the island he watched turn from a dusty beach town with a Cuban and Bahamian imprint into a worldwide vacation destination with sky-high rent and million-dollar cottages.

“I’ll be doing shows once a year forever, until the day I die,” said Thurber, 56. “I depict Conch life. My work honors the Conch culture, the people, the lifestyle,” Thurber said. “That’s what I do.”

Thurber’s world is a simpler time that covers his childhood, when Key West was a collection of immigrant families, shrimpers, drinkers, small business owners and smugglers sharing a tribal-like connection on a remote island closer to Havana than Miami.

He gets the real deal Key West in a way only a native son or daughter could: The blood-thickened bond islanders share, having grown up for generations here, and the freedom that comes with living on the edge of America where the saltwater surrounds it all.

Like that Key West culture, Thurber’s paintings are originals. He doesn’t believe in prints or copies.

“If I didn’t make it with my hand, I can’t sell it,” he said the other morning at the Gallery on Greene, 606 Greene St., which will host a reception for Thurber and his new exhibit, “Sand in My Shoes,” Oct. 22 from 5 to 8 p.m.

Comparsa dancers will perform at 7 p.m.

Thurber has opened a show each October for 15 years, always on the Saturday of the weekend-long Bahama Village Goombay Festival, which precedes the 10-day Fantasy Fest.

The painter, who also makes woodcarvings from found pieces such as a sailboat hatch or door of an old lobster trap, is as modest as many of his subjects.

“A handyman” is how he describes the job he held for decades while taking courses from artist Sandford Birdsey in plein air — painting subjects like buildings and crowded streets in person under four hours.

Thurber paints daily, carving out his authentic Key West world populated by quirky characters who roam about boatyards, the shallow waters, the corner coffee shop, Truman Avenue and a Bahama Village jazz club no longer on the map.

These Key West figures lived and breathed the same saltwater-tinged air Thurber did: The snow-cone man who kept a bottle of rum stashed in the ice; Flea, a smuggler said to have met his end by being pitched out of his plane by rival marijuana importers; Frank the fruit stand owner on Truman Avenue; and the Cookie Lady from Mallory Square.

“She now works at the Hemingway House,” Thurber said of the cookie maker with the flowing long hair.

For Thurber, who has been in Key West for about three months preparing for the Oct. 22 opening, Key West won’t ever leave him. He plans to make such lengthy visits each year.

“I don’t want to die with a mop in my hand,” Thurber said. “I’d rather die with a paint brush in my hand.”

This story was originally published October 15, 2016 at 9:32 AM with the headline "Painter captures Key West’s charms, characters in new exhibit."