A Painter's Story

I am essentially a self-taught painter.  As long as I can remember I have had an interest in art.  I was always able to draw reasonable likenesses of people, animals, and things.  When I was growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, my father used to take my brother and me to the Cleveland Art Museum on many Sunday afternoons.  As we roamed the galleries I was in awe of the size and number of paintings that were there.  Later after the service, college, and while working full time, I often fantasized about living Gauguin's dream and become a painter.  The responsibilities of providing for a growing family overrode my dream and my focus returned to "real life".  However the fantasy remained.  My first wife who was a very fine watercolorist, died early  in her life in California.  During my time in California, I watched Helen Van Wyk's weekly demos on PBS television which were filmed in Rockport MA.  At the time I had no idea I would move to the Boston area and meet my present wife Lenore who connected me to Cape Ann. 

Lenore shares my passion for art and was aware of my fantasy to be a painter.  For a birthday present she gave me lessons to a weekly painting workshop with Debbie Clarke in Magnolia.  I became a weekend painter.  In the beginning I stained canvases. After I got over the idea of conserving paint, the canvases had more vigor and I became confident enough to enter pieces into the Magnolia Art Festival.  I was euphoric when three of the paintings were sold.  I honestly thought that my art career had taken off.  I took the bit and entered the Marblehead Art Association's annual open show.  It was a shock when I received a kind letter stating that my landscape painting had been rejected and would I please retrieve it.

That was an object lesson.  Good things don't come easily.  Painting is a process.  Like most endeavors that take a refined skill, it takes effort, failures, and the perseverance to succeed.  Over the past two years, I have become a full time painter.  I try to paint every day.  I have taken workshops with several very fine artists: T.M. Nicholas, David Curtis, Jeff Weaver, Caleb Stone, and Carleen Muniz.  Most recently, I spent two weeks  at the Fechin Institute, in New Mexico, painting with Greg Kruetz.  I have become an artist member of the Marblehead Arts Association and the Newburyport Arts Association.  And on 4/1/08 I was juried into the Oil Painters of America (OPA).

Lenore and I go art museums, large and small. when the chance affords itself. I still view painting as an evolving process.  I am and will be forever fascinated with the act of taking a few tubes of paint, several brushes, a piece of canvas and being able to create a three dimensional picture.  My wife is my soul mate and my most ardent critic.  Often after I finish a painting, she usually looks at it and makes positive remarks.  Then she will  go up close and say something about some small item.  I usually argue, and pout and insist the item is insignificant.  She leaves the studio, and invariably I make the change and the painting is better after the correction.