Celebrating without bitterness

A unique exhibit showcasing the artwork of a veteran will be shown for the month of November in the Creston Arts Gallery. Abstract designs with focused lines and minimal color make up the majority of artwork created by Lawrence Earl Nash, with a short line on the bottom of each piece crediting him as “L.E.N. ‘Earl’, Vietnam Vet.”

Nash had passed away earlier this year on May 27, Memorial Day. His artwork, alongside a selection of letters and photos, is being presented by his daughter, Jennifer Queener, who lives in Creston.

Despite the familial blood, Queener described her relationship with her father as tumultuous. As Queener discovered his artwork, she said she was able to understand a part of him she never saw while he was alive.

“I knew my dad liked art, he drew,” Queener said. “But, as far as seeing the extensive amount of work, his portfolios, I hadn’t really had a chance to see those. I didn’t understand the kind of art that he did.”

Queener’s relationship with her father was mostly disconnected, with her growing up without Nash close to her, only reconnecting during a few important moments of her life. This disconnect makes her ability to celebrate her father, who lived a chaotic life, complex and strained.

“To celebrate him as a person, as an artist, as a veteran, those are my goals,” she said. “To honor that person is what this becomes. There are feelings of overwhelming frustration. I never really had the anger, I didn’t grow up with anger, it wasn’t there. That overwhelming frustration of, it could have been one more relationship. With this artwork, I wanted to celebrate my dad. I can’t.”

Nash had joined the Army and fought in the Vietnam War starting in 1968. In 1970, Nash was injured and earned the Purple Heart for his service. He continued serving until the mid-’70s.

During this time, Nash married Shirley Elaine Cook in 1969, who would give birth to a daughter, Jennifer, in 1972. During Nash’s time serving, he would send letters to his wife. Queener said the contents of these letters showed he was a “love-sick puppy.”

Following the end of Nash’s time in the Army, he and Shirley divorced in 1978, with Nash moving to Arkansas. He would remarry twice, living his life away from Queener, who described her father at this point as a “drifter.”

Queener grew up as an only child, with her father living a separate life from her. Her mother, even after the divorce, would never say anything negative about her former husband. Queener said she saw her father less than a handful of times before she turned 10, dubbing him as a “mystery man.”

Nash’s drifting would eventually lead to a stepchild, Daniel, who Queener would connect with later in life, despite a 10 year age gap. Daniel was also an only child and lived through a similar experience to Queener. The two developed a “brother-sister relationship,” which was an “unexpected surprise” for Queener.

“Throughout all of this, we’ve become closer,” Queener said. “We’re two different people, Daniel was 10, I was 20. We may not be blood-related, but to [my kids], he was Uncle Daniel. I can finally say, I have a brother.”

In regards to Nash’s disconnect with his children, Queener believed this was due to personal struggles Nash faced in his lifestyle following his time serving in the Army, mentioning his drug addiction and alcoholism as reasons to keep Nash away during Queener’s younger years.

“I think he had a hard time making personal connections,” she said. “It never developed. That father-daughter relationship that I so desperately wanted, I had to give that up.”

Starting in the ‘90s, Nash began making his artwork, which he kept to himself in personal portfolios. Besides his artwork, Nash would dedicate a large focus and time into a career of stonemasonry, building “fences, fireplaces, brickwork, anything with stone.” Queener guessed these provided respites from his personal struggles.

“I don’t think my dad was focused, he was too chaotic to be focused,” she said. “But, the artwork was. It looked like he tuned everything out, and it was his ink, his color and his paper. That was his way.”

Later in life, after meeting her future husband, Chad, Queener attempted to reconnect, creating a meeting between her then-fiancé and Nash. She described the relationship at this point with her father as “more of a friendly relationship than a father-daughter relationship.”

When the couple and Nash met in 1993, Queener said the meeting was “awkward.” A nervous habit Queener developed in her life since childhood was twirling her hair. When the habit returned during the meeting, Chad had laughed and pointed out Nash was twirling his own hair at the exact same time. Coincidentally, Nash and Queener had also ordered the same meal.

When Queener was pregnant with her first child, she had a dispute with a medical clinic, who refused to reimburse her. This was at a time when Queener was living close to her father in Arkansas. Her father heard about this, and set up an easel and paints outside of the clinic in protest.

“My dad had leather, and was a scruffy, scary biker dude,” Queener said. “He set up in front of a women’s clinic. They were going to get him whatever he wanted, they paid him off.”

Having children helped Queener realize aspects that were missing from her own childhood, especially in her relationship with her father. However, Queener was able to preserve her children’s relationship with their grandfather, which allowed Nash to show Queener and her children his artwork.

In 2020, Nash was hospitalized at the Dwight D. Eisenhower VA Medical Center in Leavenworth, Kansas, after a vehicle accident. Queener would assist him as he went in and out of surgeries and various transfers, including to hospitals in Grant City, Missouri, in 2022 and Mount Vernon, Missouri, in 2024, where he would pass away.

During this time, Queener said the relationship, despite being more local, was strained. “I don’t know if he ever saw me as a daughter, that I could help him,” she said. “He knew I was his daughter, he knew his grandkids, but there was never a personal connection.”

After Nash’s passing, Queener was able to connect with people who knew him throughout his life, including former classmates, fellow veterans and neighbors. Through them, she slowly started piecing together an idea of her own father, while also becoming friends.

This process of meeting people close to her father helped her come to terms with any simmering tension while also plotting out a timeline of his life, learning secondhand the stories of her father.

Even later in life, Queener said giving up on the connection she could have shared with her father was difficult. “That was hard,” she said. “That was a very hard thing to realize that it was never going to happen. But, he’s still a person, he’s still in my life. So, here we are.”

With Nash’s artwork, Queener was able to parse some of the chaos which surrounded her father’s life. “I can look at this, and see my dad’s brain working,” he said. “I don’t think he ever set out for these to look like this, I think he just put his pen to paper and this is what came out. There is no plan, but it looks like it. I don’t know if you could plan this.”

The majority of Nash’s artwork are in black-and-white, with a few detailed with precise color. Each of Nash’s artwork is untitled, with Queener saying Nash never intended them to be displayed. Yet, each piece of artwork and letter showed different sides of the same man, which Queener said was like “fitting puzzle pieces together.”

“Seeing them in a portfolio, and seeing them on the wall is going to be a little overwhelming,” Queener said.

Queener is still friends with some of her father’s peers, friends and family. “Really special things have come into play,” she said. “I wouldn’t give that up for the world.”

With all the drama surrounding her view of her father, Queener says she still avoids feeling bitter. “Some things don’t work out, but you don’t have to be bitter about it,” she said. “You don’t have to be angry, you do the best you can.”