The Landscape of Painting

My Life as an Artist | Part One

A Sliver of Light | 2008

Above you see one of my oil paintings, painted last year. I’ll be writing this blog to talk about my artwork, and how I’ve evolved as an artist, and about the artists who’ve influenced and inspired me along the way, but first I think there should be an introduction. Unless I sent you the link, you may not know who I am or my artwork. So gather ’round children and I’ll tell you the tale of How I Got Here.

I majored in painting at Kenyon, small liberal arts college, and I was one of only six art majors. The program was kind of experimental and basically we had a lot of freedom (good) but very little instruction (bad), other than in drawing and art history. I often wish I had gone to an actual art school so I could have actually learned something about painting. It would have given me a head start. Oh well. Everything I know about painting I’ve taught myself. But I did manage in college to develop a sense of what art should be, for me at least.

The whole time I was in college I played in a band, St. John’s Wood, (very English, don’t you know) which later became an acoustic duo, Budgie (from a John Lennon story – very English, don’t you know). We were serious about trying to make it as musicians after college, and since my partner in the duo was moving to Washington DC for graduate school (everybody’s gotta have a fall-back), and I went too so that we could continue writing songs and performing in clubs. And that we did, playing here, there and everywhere, as the headliner or opening for bigger names. As it happens, we were captured on video (a pretty rare occurrence for 1971), and here’s a song from that video – I’m the dark-haired translucent one:

I needed a day job, so I decided to give commercial illustration a try, even though I had no real clue about it, other than having an admiration for illustrators like C. Dana Gibson, Howard Pyle, N. C. Wyeth and John Held Jr., all of whom I learned about in my art history classes. So I created a portfolio of made-up illustrations and took it around to newspapers, magazines and advertising agencies.

Here’s an illustration I did for an article on the disappearance of the family farm in The Washington Post, using a technique called scratchboard. This technique was used in the early 20th century, but had pretty much disappeared by the time I happened to read about it. The medium for scratchboard is a fairly rigid paper that has a white clay-like surface covered with black India ink. The artist uses various sharp tools to reveal the white below, kind of working the opposite of drawing with a pen. Because no one else seemed to be using scratchboard, I thought it would be a good way to differentiate myself from other illustrators in DC. Art directors appreciated the novelty, and I got a fair amount of work with this technique for a while there.

Meanwhile, my musical partner and I kept on writing songs and playing our music. Our worst night was two people in the audience. We said, “Thank you, both of you.” We kept our day jobs. Over the years the duo’s name changed: Owenroe, Aethylred, Stained Glass Jeep (proposed, but never implemented), other names I’ve forgotten, and finally, October.

Over the next three years I did a illustrations for various publications, most of them governmental. I worked exclusively in black and white, doing drawings with black ink on white paper, ink washes and scratchboard. I remember that I was asked to bid on some illustrations for a Department of Energy brochure. I was told that my price was too low, and that I should bump it up some. I did, but I couldn’t help thinking that it was wrong to do so, because as a taxpayer I actually was paying for my work, and why should this person so freely spend my money on me? I hope that brochure was not really the reason we’re all in such trouble today.

In 1973 I happened to meet a group of people who were starting an alternative high school, and I was offered a job of becoming the art department. I was pretty tired of taking my portfolio around DC, so I decided that a fun job with a regular salary and summers off would be a good change, so I took the job. The plan was to do illustrations on the side, especially in the summers.

The school had very little money for supplies. We couldn’t afford linoleum blocks for printmaking, so I decided we could carve rubber erasers with X-Acto blades (amazingly, not one kid went to the emergency room on my watch) to print on paper using standard ink pads.

As the kids did their work, I began to realize that I should create some artwork myself using hand-carved rubber stamps and drawing ink. My first attempt with rubber stamps was a valentine for my mother. It was simple, but I instantly saw the possibilities for using the stamps. I became kind of obsessed with this experimentation, and teaching and illustration work started to move closer to the back of the bus.

Meanwhile, my musical partner and I kept on writing songs and playing our music at night. We had several close calls with record companies, but we kept our day jobs. I wanted to do music and do my paintings. I left teaching after four years to allow for more time doing my artwork.

Tags: landscape painting

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