Grandfather Color wants the world to get well
By Abby Chatfield
Sun contributor
Photos courtesy of Richard Stocker
You sit down with this wild-bearded, twinkly-eyed man at a table full of colored pencils and ornate coloring sheets that he created. You’re not sure why you’re here, except for feeling nostalgic for simpler times when you were just a worry-free kid. Soon, you’re pouring your heart out to Grandfather Color as you scribble, finding joy and solace through the creativity of color.
Grandfather Color, otherwise known as Richard Stocker, is the facilitator behind myriad efforts to heal the world, person by person, by guiding them through their healing process using color. He is also the facilitator of the new “Get Well World” and “Color COVID Away” campaigns that are just unrolling across Leelanau, Benzie and Grand Traverse counties.
Long before the coloring trend swept the nation, engaging adults and children alike, Richard Stocker created coloring books, hosted group coloring sessions, and shared his own fine art coloring illustrations with many others. He led coloring outreach programs in many locations around Michigan and found coloring to be an effective form of meditation for most people. “Color brings out a living spirit that ends up making the room happy and beautiful,” Richard said.
He continues to do the same today, most recently through efforts to distribute his coloring illustrations to people stuck in quarantine due to COVID. This perfectly fits his mission to serve community health, creativity, and communication, while remembering that we are alive together.
Color Covid Away
When Richard got COVID, he spent a lot of time alone in his studio thinking about how to reach people with his illustrations and message. Then a representative from the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department called to check on how he was doing and “expressed a frustration about so many people stuck at home, in many cases stuck in one room, with not much to do to ease their nerves,” he shared. “I got her attention with my coloring ideas. I suggested she call the project ‘Color COVID Away,’ and thought, this might be the way for our story to evolve.”
The health department accepted his offer to supply coloring kits, including illustrations and colored pencils, to anyone in Leelanau and Benzie counties who are quarantined for COVID-related reasons, and they are starting to deliver the kits this month.
Get Well World
Another endeavor Richard is taking on as the new year rings in is a series of jumbo-sized Get Well World cards, featuring 30 of his designs. These 17”x22” cards will be available to sign at numerous locations around Leelanau and Grand Traverse Counties. They are meant to unite our intentions to create positivity, which he believes will develop awareness to support our planet. These cards will be incorporated into an art exhibit and shared in other ways as well, possibly as framed artwork or strung together like prayer flags.
For Richard, the Color COVID Away project and the Get Well World cards have nothing to do with money. None of his projects do. That’s not because his art hasn’t crossed hundreds of lives and touched the hearts and souls of many. It’s because “Everything is a giveaway,” he said. “Money is not the aim.” In Native American culture, a giveaway is the practice of sharing to help a community remain in good health. Richard gives in the same spirit as the Native American people.
Some of his most influential life teachers were Native North American Elders and Healers who he lived close to for years. Giving things away informally is common in American Indian communities when someone enjoys good fortune, and it is called a giveaway. Richard is inspired to share his own good fortunes with others as well, in the same spirit as the American Indian giveaway.
Richard said that “It all began with Santi,” his young son who battled with leukemia. Santiago, called Santi by family and friends, was a gifted spokesperson. Through public speaking and radio interviews, Santi shared his experiences with leukemia and how the medicine of color helped heal his spirit during a dark time. While Santi was hospitalized, Richard brought his son hand-drawn illustrations to color. Every day, Santi spent hours coloring his father’s drawings and proudly hung them on the hospital walls. Richard began sharing his designs with hospital staff and other patients throughout the hospital, and it became apparent how uplifting the coloring process was for so many. He learned following his son’s struggle with cancer that families need something easy and creative to do as a unit and when they’re trying to unwind as individuals.
Santi passed away, and Richard started a nonprofit called Hospital Art for Kids to share his art and coloring supplies, along with the healing properties of coloring, with cancer families in hospitals all around the United States and Latin America.
It was during this time that Richard met his wife, Cathy. She amazes him to this day with her talents as a listener, writer, and editor of many projects. They cofounded the Coloring Well, a project to spread the healing benefits of coloring by sharing Richard’s black and white designs and inviting adults to color them. Although not active now, their efforts brought relief to hundreds of people.
It was this type of innovative work, creating community through coloring, that landed him a role as a featured artist at The Detroit Institute of Arts and the University of Michigan Museum of Art. His work also appeared in the 2015 Art Prize and, most recently, at the Old Art Building in Leland over the course of two art exhibits. One of those was an outdoor exhibit highlighting his designs on weather-proof vinyl canvases designed to hang on building exteriors and trees. Richard also created an Art Walk that he shared with the public at the Old Art Building’s Artists’ Market last July. The Art Walk contains 40 of Richard’s designs, arranged in a long line on vinyl and displayed lying flat on the ground. People are encouraged to walk on the art, like a sidewalk.
Richard began visiting Northern Michigan on a regular basis in the 1960s, around the same time he started drawing in earnest. Since then, Richard has completed more than 500 fine art coloring illustrations that he utilizes for his unique and effective approach to art therapy, and he is now a full-time Leelanau County resident. Richard currently has more than 200 large designs and 300 smaller designs.
You can find Richard’s work at Twisted Fish Gallery in Elk Rapids, Main Street Gallery in Leland and occasionally in art exhibits at the Old Art Building. His next exhibit there is called “The Fine Art of Coloring,” where he’ll share current work and fine art coloring illustrations. Anyone who has attended one of Richard’s art shows knows that the artist will be on site, coloring with his visitors. The exhibit runs from Jan. 14-Jan. 27, 2022.
Richard invites those interested in learning more about his projects and artwork to email him directly at partlycloudy@rstocker.com, and he would like everyone to know that Grandfather Color is a nickname bestowed upon him by some young students during one of his coloring classes.
