My artistic journey

My origins are rural northeast Washington State, near Canada and the Columbia River in the 40’s and 50’s. I first encountered painting when I took the train, at sixteen, to Seattle to see the Vincent Van Gogh retrospective in 1958. Before that I was a cartoonist. After that, never again a cartoonist. I began to see the world through the process of painting. (My parents were disturbed by Post-Impressionist early modernist influences in my first paintings.) It was a calling, a life long journey.

After high school I traveled, first to California for an episode in art school. Then Mexico to see Orozco’s murals. Later, Amsterdam for Rembrandt, Florence for Masaccio, et cetera, and in my maturity, Paris, Rome, and Tunis. Subsequent trips to France, Italy and Tunisia further ignited my creative process. But it would be years before I finally resolved to focus seriously on my painting.

Over the years I made my living as a landscape designer and laborer. Close enough to art, but closer to a regular income. At times the physical effort left me too exhausted to engage in art. Even with the physical demand of gardening, I attempted to paint with various degrees of satisfaction. It wasn’t that I was a Sunday painter with a hobby. Living required that I paint. I never really abandoned my calling as an artist, but this period was a virtual purgatory, artistically speaking. There were moments of successes and recognition that kept me knowing that there was something in my vision. It wasn’t until I was sixty that I reached my limit. No longer young, I questioned what I could do better as an aging man than I did in youth.

One morning eight years ago, while putting on my work boots I checked my calendar to see which yard today, and I saw that it was my birthday. Sixty! I removed my boots, resolved to paint instead. This day, and the day forty-four years earlier, visiting the Van Gogh Retrospective, were the epiphany moments. "Paint! Paint now."

But where to begin? Paint what? Paint what you know, that is a good rule. I knew landscaping as a gardener, so I started again with landscape paintings, abstract landscape paintings. In art school I had applied myself only to drawing and art history. Out of these components I started over, challenging myself to paint every day. To teach myself how to handle paint, how to truly notice what was emerging through my daily practice.

After years of landscape labor, I realized that I had unintentionally found my theme: The mystery of life seen through seasons, generations, evolution, and transcendence. It's been nearly a decade of continued focus now, and I am pleased with what is unfolding.

I haven’t exhibited much, know little about the art scene, and have avoided artists’ colonies. My friends are writers, musicians, animals and books. (Humans are the animals who read.)

Professor Catherine West at Converse College conducts student tours in France and Tunisia. Through her interest in art and philosophy, she’s developed a friendship with Tunisian artist, Hamadi ben Saad who does large abstract collages and figurative work. In Tunisia, she introduced me to Hamadi. I admire his friendly embrace of the world, his productivity, and his artistic vision.

It was Cathy who recognized something in each of our work that is compatible. Stylistically he is one thing and I am another, but we share a Both/And approach, abstract and figurative.

Hamadi ben Saad and I will have a show at Converse College, Spartanburg, SC, in February-March 2010. Our exhibit explores transatlantic voyages and mutual respect.
Please come dialogue with us.