Some Reflecting
The start of a new year always gets one thinking ahead to new plans and new ideas. Pam and are excited for it all. Today I find myself thinking about where I am at this moment in my painting career and how I got here. Where would I be today without all the early instruction and guidance from my teachers at Paier College of Art ? (pronounced like the fruit)
Paul Lipp, is still painting and was valedictorian of his class at Paier. A former marine, he had a rigid disciplinary style and introduced me to oil painting. I had an early habit of leaving a lot of white showing through the canvas in all my paintings. I was clueless about the meeting of edges. Paul Lipp corrected that one very quickly.
Rudolph Zallinger, who could draw and paint the figure like there was no tomorrow, made you want to strive to learn anatomy. Zallinger painted the famous ‘Age of Reptiles’ mural for Yale University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History. The mural was 110 feet wide by 16 feet tall and took 10 years to complete. Rudy was a professor at Yale School of Fine Arts.
Dean Keller, made much sense of portraiture in the very short time he instructed our class and I quickly dove into the idea of becoming a portrait painter. Keller was a professor of art at Yale for 40 years and painted 160 portraits for the university. He also painted two presidents.
Joseph Funaro, who taught portraiture in my third and fourth year was a God send. A very disciplined and direct teacher, Funaro expected your best and he didn’t mince words when making a statement about what you had on your easel. In my third year at Paier, I developed a bit of an attitude towards art school in general and I was caught up too much in the social scene. I started to arrive late to Funaro’s morning portrait class and even missed a few altogether. One day he asked to see me after class and he basically told me that if I was going to be disrespectful by coming late or by missing classes, I shouldn’t bother coming at all. Ouch. Then I saw that he had pulled a few of my paintings from the storage racks and he proceeded to explain to me that he wouldn’t even bother with me, except that I had real potential. He pointed to a couple areas in my portraits and told me that they reminded him of Sargent. He encouraged me to buckle down and get to work. I was never late again to his class and it was the moment that I truly got serious about painting.
John Massimino is a skilled and prolific painter. He’s 92 years young and still going strong. I read an article about him giving a talk recently. As a teacher, Massimino would inspire you from the moment he opened his mouth. He had a way of speaking that was very animated with a lot of hand movements. Then he’d pause to look around the room in order to let his words sink in. On his face would be a grin that confirmed without a doubt, that he was passionate about what he was teaching. He made you feel like he was talking to you directly. He taught composition classes and to this day, I can hear his motivating talks and his unique way of getting his point across.
Robert Zappalorti is a photo realist painter. He paints trompe l’oeil and still life paintings that show a mastery of skill. He taught drawing at Paier and he was energetic and demanding in his approach. In my fourth year, one of our final drawing assignments in his class, was to take a Sears catalogue and choose a number of complicated items like a skill saw or power drill and draw them a bit larger than the image appeared and as exacting as possible. Then we had to turn these objects a quarter of a turn in our mind and draw them again from that imagined viewpoint. If that wasn’t already hard enough, we then had to turn them another quarter turn and draw them from this newly conceived angle. I think we had to do this with 8 items. He asked to keep mine as an example of getting it right for future classes to see. It was a great exercise!
Charles Sovek was a New York illustrator during his time teaching at Paier. He was a fun and energetic teacher who was always showing us new ways to approach things. He would bring in some of his illustrations, sometimes as they were being worked on and they were inspiring. His style at the time was realistic but in an illustrative and painterly way. I loved his classes even if he never pronounced my last name correctly. He was also working plein air on his own time and wrote his first book ‘Catching Light In Your Paintings’ while I was at school. A lot of the painting examples of figures in the book, came directly from his classes or from the painting time that he would generously spend with students after class. The models in the book are my fellow classmates. He also brought in the landscape paintings that were part of the book and he had a show of the in one of the galleries in the school. All of this planted a seed. Whenever I look at one of Sovek’s books on painting, I am right back at school like it was yesterday.
The photo realist painter of the highest caliber, Ken Davies was the dean of the school when I attended my four year program there. He was influential in helping me and other fellow students in our last year of the program to put together a rock solid portfolio. I was an illustration major and I would meet with him to discuss and plan each idea that I had. It was intense. I remember the discussions fondly. He has a brilliant mind. His advice was always carefully thought out and well intended. He wasn’t one of my instructors per say, but he did help me to build confidence and helped me realize that the portfolio I was building was unique and that my painting ability was strong.
Paier College of Art played a big part of who I am today. The four year program taught the principles needed In order to begin to really hone the craft of painting. It taught me that discipline was vital to success.
This month I was featured in Southwest Art’s online magazine with an article called My Process-My portfolio. I was interviewed by phone for just about one hours time. The resulting article is just a few paragraphs long with a few images to accompany it. Short and sweet.
Here is the link to the article.
My Process-My Portfolio