Walk with a painter

I have always loved to draw.

Some of my earliest recollections are of sitting at the kitchen table copying cartoon characters from comic books. But usually when warm weather rolled around, I’d cut out for the woods that stood on the opposite hillside of the farm that bordered our neighborhood. We called them Sherwood Forest and it was a fun filled world for us merry men of yore. On part of that rolling farmland, behind our houses, we would play a rather loose version of football and baseball. The dried cow pies made excellent bases! Those distant summers bring back a lot of fond memories. I really enjoyed all the roughhousing but my lack of athletic ability usually earned me more bruises than victories. So, it was back to the drawing board where I could lick my wounds and concentrate on my sketching and painting.

Saturday mornings eventually meant a trip to the Carnegie Museum’s Tam O’ Shanter art classes and in later years dad would drive me across Pittsburgh to take painting classes at various art schools. My father told me that my artistic ability probably came from his father who was an accomplished artist and spent most of his career in the Atlantic Refining Company’s drafting department where he designed labels for their oil products. I’m sure my interest in graphic design also stemmed from his influence.

From the start I had a great appreciation of watercolors. The paintings of my godfather, Lee Thorne, an architect and my father’s best friend, were an inspiration. Lee’s watercolors fascinated me with their deft strokes and bold colors. Unfortunately, those paintings were lost years ago, but they had a lasting impact on me. It wasn’t until years later that those old stirrings bubbled to the surface and began to flow out of my own brushes.

Immediately following my discharge from the U.S. Marine Corps in late August 1958, I enrolled in the Art Institute of Pittsburgh to prepare myself for a career in commercial art. Finally, I was on my way to putting some practical structure to my artistic yearnings.

Over the next couple of years, the person who exerted the most influence on me was Vincent Nesbert, the dean of the school and an extraordinary artist who taught life drawing. Most of the students were kids fresh out of high school in whom he strived mightily to instill his wisdom, sometimes in the most bizarre and humorous fashion. However, there were a handful of us “seasoned” veterans that he viewed with disdain, particularly when we’d get a bit rowdy while attempting figure studies. He would cut us off at the knees with a verbal machete and then stand there, quite pleased with himself, with a huge grin on his broad face. “Cockroaches” was the endearing term he usually reserved for us.

But the horseplay came to an end whenever he would demonstrate his vast skills in drawing and painting the human figure. Without doubt, he was the most incredible artist I have ever met! Watching him execute form and color was like a religious experience and I’ll never forget him. He would pepper his lectures with expressions that we all found hilarious at the time, but many of them were based on his strong convictions of what made a fine artist and they have helped keep me in good stead throughout my career as a graphic designer and as a painter.

Other artists whose paintings influenced me are Jan Vermeer, John Sell Cotman, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, N.C. Wyeth, Edward Hopper, Rowland Hilder, Ted Kautzky, John Pike, Philip Jamison, and Frank Webb. More recently, Tony Couch, Jeanne Dobie, and Stephen Quiller have heightened my fascination with color.