The two award-winning artists you need to see in Columbia

Two Midlands artists have received the highest honor in South Carolina for the arts, and you can see works from both of them at if Art Gallery in the Vista.

Laura Spong of Columbia and Leo Twiggs of Orangeburg were named the 2017 Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Governor’s Award for the Arts winners for Lifetime Achievement.

The Verner awards annually recognize outstanding contributions to the arts statewide.

“Both have worked at their own pace, with no shortcuts or gimmicks,” said if Art Gallery owner Wim Roefs. Both artists have been painting for decades. Spong is in her 90s, Twiggs in his 80s.

Roefs is planning a show for both artists closer to the Verner awards ceremony in May, but dozens of their pieces are currently hanging on the gallery walls should you not want to wait that long.

Leo Twiggs

This year’s Verner is Twiggs’ second; in 1981, he was the first person to receive a Verner Award as a visual artist.

“I think a lifetime achievement award more than anything means you have to do good work for a long time. I’m so pleased that somebody felt that I have done good work for a long time,” Twiggs said.

Twiggs’ batik paintings have long garnered him national and international attention. His most recent series, “Requiem for Mother Emanuel,” focuses on the June 2015 killings of nine people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. His work often depicts Southern African-American experiences and symbols, such as the Confederate flag.

Twiggs has worked in the batik medium for 53 years.

“It’s been an overwhelming blessing for me,” he said.

Laura Spong

“It felt like an Academy Award moment, where someone was going to come on stage and tell me it was a mistake,” Spong said of finding out she had won a Verner. “I really couldn’t take it in at first.”

Spong has been painting regularly since the 1950s. She juggled painting and raising six children and was only able to devote herself to art full-time in retirement.

She’s now one of state’s premier abstract painters.

Her current if Art show is a collaboration with poet Jonathan Brent Butler. “The World Begins” pairs Spong’s paintings with Brent’s poems, a difficult process for the normally intuitive artist.

“I don’t usually have a preconceived idea of what I’m doing, so I found it very hard to read his work and then put it on canvas. I’m really glad I did it; it was a real stretch,” Spong said.

As for the Verner, “I’m very grateful and humble,” she said.

Related: Laura Spong: Still Painting at 90

This story was originally published March 8, 2017 at 5:00 PM with the headline "The two award-winning artists you need to see in Columbia."