October 2002

Jeff Gorrell, Graduate School of Education dean, was an art history minor in college but didn't get hooked on painting until about eight years ago. "What I do in painting makes me a better person, and hopefully it makes me a better administrator," he says.

More Than a Hobby - Painting Is a Way of Life for GSE Dean

By Elena Barbre

If you look closely enough at the bold abstracts and serene landscapes that decorate the walls of the dean's suite in the Graduate School of Education (GSE), you will learn something fascinating about the man who occupies the corner office. Dean Jeff Gorrell is not only the lead administrator of the academic unit that educates the majority of the area's K-12 teachers each year - he is also the artist-in-residence.

An art history minor as an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, Gorrell indulged his interest only as an occasional sketch artist until eight years ago when he signed up for his first watercolor class in a continuing education course at Auburn University. In his words, he "got hooked."

"I felt like I needed something else in my life. It was as if I felt something calling me," he says. "As soon as I took that watercolor course, I knew painting really was something that was going to matter to me. Almost immediately I felt like this is a part of me, and something I won't give up."

His passion has only grown stronger in recent years as he's perfected his watercolor style, adding charcoal in abstracts that seem to whirl and leap out of their frames and in more subdued landscapes reminiscent of his favorite escapes in South and Southeast Asia, where he spent time as a Fulbright Scholar in 1987 and has since returned on many occasions.

"I can get excited about abstract art, Japanese woodblock prints, French impressionism, and traditional Indian art," he says. "I love good art - whatever kind it is."

He has attended artist's workshops in Maine, Key West, and Belgium, and this summer he branched out into oils with an Art League class at the Alexandria waterfront's Torpedo Factory that reinvigorated his artistic spirit. "Not only did that class make me go down and paint every week for three hours, but it made me want to paint all the time!"

Gorrell claims he doesn't have a favorite piece of artwork - though the one hanging over his living room couch is a strong contender - because each piece speaks to him in a different way. "There's some truth to the saying that 'artists paint to have something to look at,'" he says. "When I look at a painting later, it speaks to me. It draws me in. There's an excitement about producing something that has that effect on me."

Whether an abstract painted with a flourish reminiscent of Kandinsky or a peaceful rendering of a temple in Sri Lanka, the process of producing it is as important as the end product, says Gorrell, who often finds himself speaking in painting metaphors with his GSE colleagues. "What I do in painting makes me a better person, and hopefully it makes me a better administrator."

Though he has shown his work in several juried art shows and even sold a few paintings, making a profit from his passion is a distant retirement dream. For now, a few hours etched out of a busy evening or weekend satisfy his calling.