Hugh Greer, the artist behind Wichita’s scenic Christmas cards, is retiring

For more than 30 years, local artist Hugh Greer has been featuring iconic Wichita structures and places in crisp, nostalgic-looking wintertime scenes for cards and prints as a fundraiser for a local charity.

The College Hill neighborhood, the Delano clock tower, Union Station, the Carnegie Library, the Sedgwick County Courthouse, Minisa Bridge and North High School and other historic places and settings have been showcased over the years, with Greer poring over current and old photographs of the places, diligently counting bricks and windows and adding bundled-up people and even pets to give them an authentic appeal.

Sometimes he would add himself among the people pictured on the cards.

While the endeavor has been what he calls a win-win situation for him and the organizations that have benefited from the sales, Greer has decided his 2019 scene of the Friends University administration building with a lighted clocktower will be his final image created for the annual holiday card fundraiser.

Initially started as a fundraiser for the American Heart Association, for the past 13 years the sales of Greer’s cards and prints have raised $75,000 for the Independent Living Resource Center in Wichita, which helps individuals of all ages with disabilities live as independently as possible, according to the ILRC.

“I’m not tired of doing them and I’ve loved the attention, but it’s just time to do other things, I guess,” said the 77-year-old Greer, during an interview in his basement studio in northeast Wichita.

“I thought 25 was a good number to quit at,” Greer said, referring to the number of original scenes he’s created for the cards.

An avid fisherman with a cabin east of Wichita in an area known as the Ozark Plateau, Greer has longed to spend more time fishing and being outdoors.

“The last two weeks of September and the beginning of October are good fishing times and I’ve always been nailed down with the cards,” he said. “And as an outdoor landscape (artist), I have to get outdoors to see it.”

Greer has created nearly 1,400 paintings but it’s been the holiday cards that have likely given him a wider audience, as even non-art collectors would buy the cards and share them with others on their mailing list. Some scenes created more demand than others.

“Gee whiz, those people (in College Hill) are proud of their neighborhood and those have done well, and the Minisa Bridge with North High did well, too,” said Greer. “Some years were better than others and that’s been fun to figure out what jerks people’s chain and what’s nostalgic to them. I’ve always … worried about one bombing but so far, they did well. Some do better than others, but we haven’t had one that no one wanted to buy.”

He often would manipulate what he called the perspective of the painting.

“It’s not 100% accurate,” as if recreating a photograph, said Greer, who earned a degree in industrial design from the University of Kansas and had a 40-plus-year career creating architectural renderings, “but it’s accurate enough to make you think you know where it is.”

For example, The Hillcrest, a historic apartment complex in College Hill, can be seen in two of his College Hill cards but in reality, it doesn’t occupy the actual place where he positioned it. He added it because it’s iconic to the neighborhood.

Each year, 25,000 cards — some with a Christmas message, some with a general holiday message and some blank — were printed and sold in packs, and 250 signed lithographs were created.

Greer also would create an acrylic painting of the scene. Longtime Wichita Realtor Nestor Weigand has purchased most of those paintings, and Greer always adds a Weigand real estate sign into the painting as a nod to Weigand’s patronage.

“I think he’s one of the truly most talented artists — and I collect art —who has an amazing ability,” said Weigand, who started purchasing Greer’s work even before he started creating the holiday card scenes. Weigand has about 10 Greer paintings in his Wichita office alone and has several in his homes.

“I’ll continue to collect his work,” Weigand said.

According to Greer, the holiday card series first started as a fundraiser for the American Heart Association in 1985 with artist John Pototschnick. Greer’s first card was in 1987 and depicted Union Station. Twenty-one cards by different artists were produced for the American Heart Association’s effort until 2005; Greer was the artist for 13 of those cards.

When the American Heart Association discontinued the fundraiser, Greer contacted Cindi Unruh, the association’s former executive director who had started working at the ILRC, asking if the ILRC would be interested in picking up the series. It did in 2007.

For the past few years after the year’s image was complete, Greer would hint at his retirement, Unruh said.

“Hugh would say ‘this is my last one,’ and I’d say, ‘no, Hugh, there are still more Wichita places to do,’” Unruh said.

One of those places was Friends University’s Davis Building, which Greer had never done before. Unruh helped get approval from university officials for Greer to create the scene.

“We were just elated,” Unruh said. “He got his wish to do (the scene), and his wish to stop after this one and we got a wonderful last project.

“We can never thank him enough. He’s brought funding to our programs and awareness to our agency and never asked for anything in return,” Unruh added.

Greer will continue to create his paintings, something he tries to work on several hours each day in his studio. He takes photos of the scenes he’d like to convey, then uses tracing paper to sketch it all out, layering more paper as he adds or subtracts elements until he’s landed on the image he wants to paint.

He’s published two books related to painting, including one on acrylic painting techniques, and he’s never used a computer, he said.

“I don’t even know how to turn one on,” he said.

Terry, his wife of 34 years, has been instrumental in getting his books published and ensuring his work is in galleries and exhibitions, he said.

He has three paintings — one of which has already sold — in the upcoming “Mark 100 Regional: Celebrating 100 years of Mark Arts” exhibition that will be displayed Dec. 31 through April 18 at Mark Arts.

He recently delivered a painting to the Birger Sanzén Memorial Gallery in Lindsborg for its “Kansas Scenic Byway Invitation” that will run Jan. 19 through March 15.

His paintings generally feature idyllic outdoor scenes.

Greer, who is dyslexic, said art wasn’t his first career choice, “but it was the only area I got encouragement” from his teachers. In a time when learning disabilities weren’t on people’s radar, Greer would act up in class as a kid when he was having trouble learning.

“They’d have me making murals and they thought it was great and the rest of the time I was in the corner,” he said about his teachers. “Art was an area where I got a lot of atta boys.”

Greer’s holiday cards and lithographs, including ones from previous years, can be purchased online at ilrcks.org/2019-christmas-cards or at the IRLC, 3033 W. 2nd St in Wichita. Cost for the 2019 scene is $25 for 22-count holiday card packs, $12 for 10-count blank notecards and $25 for a signed lithograph. Cost for holiday cards and lithographs remaining for previous years is $15 and $8 for blank notecards. Proceeds benefit the ILRC. For more information, call 316-942-6300.