29
T IDEA TO IDEAL
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
is a contemporary landscape — a
golden orb on a dark field of color.
Newkirk currently lives on
Wrightsville’s Sunset Avenue with his
son, Craig Newkirk, who has drafted
many of his father’s designs. When
the architect isn’t fishing Banks
Channel or out in the Gulf Stream,
he is never too far away from a sketch
pad and a pencil, or a fresh canvas
and paint brush.
“I never could paint,” Newkirk
says. “I always wanted to. I did win
first place in oils in college and been
accepted in the North Carolina
Artists Exhibition a few times, and
Irene Leache and painting of the year.”
He won first prize in oils at
Charlotte’s Mint Museum in 1959.
It’s not uncommon for an architect
to also be a painter.
“You’ve got to be one or the other,”
he says. “If you want to paint, paint.”
“Joe Cox and I had a two-man show
in Wilmington down at Second and
Orange,” he recalls one afternoon last
month. “He won the painting of the
year contest that year,” Newkirk says.
“He did some of those fishermen paint-ings
way before Claude saw them.”
he telling of the story is
inspired by a recent visit to
the Figure Eight Island home
of Rachel Camp, a home Newkirk
designed for her in the 1980s. Camp
owns three large paintings by the late
Claude Howell.
“You said Claude Howell copied
you,” Camp teases Newkirk.
“I said that?” Newkirk asks. “I
know one thing. He sure knew what
Joe Cox was doing.”
Camp’s house is one of Newkirk’s
favorites.
Its crisp, white walls scored with
The open staircase
and cantilevered
landing articulate the
interior of the two-story
Newkirk home
on Airlie Road.
Landfall Center, Wilmington - 910.256.3256
www.twilliamsoninteriors.com