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
What Draws You In?
What Draws You In?
Recently, Pam and I hopped in our car and headed to Perkins Cove in beautiful Ogunquit Maine to paint. Although the cove is just a little over 12 miles down the road from us, we hadn't seen the ocean in awhile. We had spent the winter and the first few weeks of spring, painting the snowy New England landscape around our neighborhood and up into the mountains of Jackson New Hampshire and Jeffersonville Vermont. So as we neared Perkins cove and caught our first glimpse of Oarweed Cove in the distance, our hearts started racing with excitement.
We walked out towards the western end of the Marginal Way and both painted 8x10 canvases of a sparkling sea before the sun sank behind the steep prominence of Israel Hill Rd. It was a joy to be out painting the new season and to be filled with the sights and the sounds and the smells that is everything New England coastline.
I don't know of anyone who isn't attracted to the ocean and mesmerized by the pull of its ever changing tides. One moment it lulls you into a calm reflective state and then one of excitement and awe as low tide gives way to the reckless and persistent manner of a high tide pushing its way into shore. Its always a wonder to behold and it literally draws me in. Besides the beauty of seeing, there is also the sounds and smells that add to the excitement of it all. Crashing waves, seagulls and the salty ocean air, all make for a perfect recipe to delight the senses.
As a painter, I can be intoxicated by the vastness of a scene or I can become enamored with a more intimate and close up view of a few rocks and the swirl of the ocean tide. Because the ocean is constantly moving, it's a subject that keeps me on my toes. It's always a fun subject to tackle. Even when I walk away at the end of a painting session with something that will probably be put in the 'miss' pile, it's always a learning experience and a great day.
I'm looking forward to teaching my 3-day plein air workshop along the Marginal Way June 12-14 and there still a few spots remaining. The Marginal Way is a breathtaking scenic coastal walk that is just over a mile long. It is paved for easy walking and there are 39 public benches that span its entirety. The views are spectacular and offer the plein air painter a rare treat of ocean and rocky shoreline that will really draw you in!
A Brush With The Past
A Brush With The Past
As we move closer to warmer days ahead, the smell of spring is already in the air and the warmth of the sun feels a little bit stronger. It's fun to start thinking of spring and the budding of trees and beautiful blooms of color, that this great new season brings. But before that happens, my mind is gearing up for one more rendezvous with the winter landscape.
With its views of farms, rivers and covered bridges, nestled among majestic views of Mount Mansfield, Lamoilee County Vermont has long been a gathering place for painters. The towns of Jeffersonville, Waterville and Cambridge have been painted by the likes of great painters; Emile Gruppe, Aldro Hibbard, Chauncey Ryder and Tommy Curtin, just to name a few. Painters continue flocking to the area to paint.
A few years ago, painter, Stapelton Kearns organized the Jeffersonville Winter Rendezvous, inviting painters to come to Jeffersonville for some camaraderie and painting together in the mountains. Many of the artists stay at the Smugglers Notch Inn, where the old timers used to meet-up after a long day of painting. It will be a fun opportunity to go and paint with artists I know and to make some new friends along the way.
I have my own history with the area. My first trip to this painting mecca, was in the fall of 1993, with my friend and mentor, George Carpenter. By the time I went with him, George had been making yearly pilgrimages to Jeffersonville for a lot of years. In fact, he once lived in nearby Cambridge and owned the house that Tommy Curtin had lived in. George had painted with Gruppe and a host of other well known painters and so, as you can imagine, I was excited as ever to make the trip. George knew ALL the painting spots and filled me with story after story about Gruppe, Curtin, Hibbard, Ryder, Connaway and more.
George and I were driving to a painting spot a couple of days into the trip and we came across a group of painters in the area where we were going to paint. That was my first introduction to painters, Paul Strisik, Alden Bryan, Ron Straka, Dale Movalli, Doug Higgins and a couple more, who's names escape me. Charles Movalli was on this trip as well, but was painting at another location. They were all going to be celebrating Alden Bryan's 80th birthday that evening and George and I were invited to the party. It was such a thrill for this 34 year old plein air painter to be up in the mountains and have a chance to paint and celebrate with these artists. Its a great memory, and I have pictures from that time.
After that initial trip, I made trips there with George on many occasions and after Pam and I were married in 2000, we would go up there every year to paint, sometimes in the fall and sometimes in the winter. We would meet George and his dear wife, Ginna and it was always a special time. There was one year around this same time of year, that we went up with some good friends for a full week of painting and the weather was so perfect that we drove home when the week was up, and came back with our daughter Jen and our son Ben, who wanted to paint up there. They were 11 and 13 years old at the time. We had one fantastic weather day of painting snow, dressed in only light spring jackets, only to wake up the next day to a surprise snow storm, that kept us in our hotel rooms for a full day and a half!
Fast forward to the present day and I haven't been to Jeffersonville for quite a few years. Time has a way of changing things and putting obstacles in our way. It's time to reconnect with a place I remember fondly and to be a part of the tradition of artists painting together alive and well.
And it's the maple sugaring season. I cant wait to paint some sugar shacks!