Beginnings…
My fascination with art began at an early age and my upbringing contributed much to it. There was classical reading and music appreciation in my home. There was Masterpiece Theatre, Boston Pops, ethnic cabaret style music on weekends. My eyes were constantly glued to picture books, historical paintings, the vanity and professional portraits that hung in retail and municipal establishments in my home town. The two pivotal circumstances that solidified my direction was a visit to the New Britain Museum of American Art and the National Museum of Warsaw, Poland. While viewing Jan Matejko’s huge mural, - The “Battle of Grunwald” and Malczewski’s “The Death of Emilia” I made a commitment to figure out “the secret” to controlling the brush and paint to convey what my imagination desired. I was 9 years old at the time and those events took place around 1970.
I started sketching in junior high and playing with low grade paints and brushes. In my high school years I received emotional support from my art teacher (and sometimes my peers), although she didn’t do much to help me technically. It was a typical high school art class where the minimum was taught and the kids treated it as recess time. I took it seriously though. I realized how naïve and under-instructed I was when I took a sketching class in college and the professor rolled his eyes while witnessing me sketching with a #2 writing pencil. (If someone had told me about H & B series pencils and where to buy them, I could have been spared some embarrassment). Eventually, through books, additional workshops and classes, frequent gallery and museum visits and of course trial and much error, I finally figured out whatever there was to figure out and arrived at a certain point of competency.
In the 1980’s I did study periodically with C Royd Crosthwaite, an award-winning illustrator/fine artist whose most prestigious period was the mid 1960’s and 1970’s but who faded into artistic obscurity shortly after that decade. He taught me a great deal about painting techniques and approaches.
Focus….
It all starts with something personal, with the choice of subject followed by the overall process. You have to have a fascination with surroundings, nature and life in order to want to interpret it on a surface. All art is an extension of creation, or better said an enhancement of it. Like everything else I consider painting to be a form of communication, a transferal of intuitive emotion to a viewer. There has to be an emotional connection for the viewer, something clearly identifiable. It is always in the back of my mind whenever I’m drawing or painting.
I strive to be what is referred to as a painterly-painter.
In my early painting days, I made a copy of a Fragonard painting entitled “A Young Girl Reading” from a photo-print. Not long after, when I got a chance to view the original at the National Gallery in Washington DC, I was amazed at the nuances that were non-visible in the print. This picture from the Rococco period portrayed a girl in a yellow dress in profile reading a small book. The facial area and torso area were defined in well blended impasto. The outer perimeter of the area proved more intriguing when at close range I observed a never ending rendering of semi-opaque and translucent washes randomly scribbled yet with poetic intent, to the degree that a forger would have his work cut out for him if he strove for a perfect copy. Every stroke was personal, deliberate yet loose and carefree. In another hall I viewed a Franz Hals rendering of his famous baroque cavaliers with the bold strokes that matched the bravado of his sitters. I took that lesson of painterly gesture home with me and never a day passes without my reflecting on it.
