People have been telling me
I need to beef up my artist profile. What is about to follow may be more ‘beef’ than the average person can swallow. I’ve spent a day or so thinking about my history with ‘art’. It’s spotty, at best.
When I was in my late teens,
out of high school, I heard that Lydia Pinkham—she of “Lydia Pinkham’s Pink Pills for Ladies” had died. I was so moved by this that I created a series of pen and ink drawings called “Lydia Pinkham Enters Heaven”. My friend, Henry Summers, took these to our local artist, Morton Birkin, who pronounced them “very refreshing”. This is another way of saying “Why are you showing me these?” The Lydia Pinkham drawings were basically renditions of an aging southern belle emerging out of what looked like a bunch of Rorschach tests. These pen and inks are tragically lost forever.
Next, always looking for trouble,
I stumbled upon an oil painting set which must have come from the local five and dime. I created a series called “Pigs in All Walks of Life”.These were done in a thinned out paint style without the slightest notion of perspective. But they had some social value as they depicted the flatness of suburban life. I remember one in particular called “Waiting for the 96 Bus”. The Black and immigrant cleaning women would ride the 96 bus out of Paterson, NJ to the burbs where they could find work. These works, alas, have also been lost.
I ceased and desisted for a couple of years
until one day, as a New Jersey housewife, I signed up for a drawing course (with Morton Birkin) at the local Adult Ed. I still have the series of figure drawings of Birkin’s model-- Nora. Apparently this was enough for me for a good long while. Birkin had recommended to the Adult Ed class a book by Kimon Nicolaides—The Natural Way to Draw—which I lugged with me from New Jersey to Boston in 1968. After years of engaging in political mischief-making in the anti-war and women’s movements I dug this book out and in 1976 began to draw again. Not everyone learns from their mistakes!
I drew and then painted on leftover computer print-out paper
from the Harvard School of Public Health where I worked—or tried hard not to work. Oddly, I actually have matted and framed paintings from that period on my walls. All done in leftover computer paper. Archival? I don’t think so. This does not keep me up at night as I seriously doubt my stuff will be hanging in the Met one day. Such a relief not to have the pressure.
I kept this (painting and drawing) nonsense up
until 1982, when I moved to NYC. Somehow I managed to bring with me the easel my father made for me and a plastic garbage bag full of my work. I later dragged it all to my home on Hamilton Ave where my daughter was born in 1985. No artwork was done after that until 2003. I was back in the Boston area by then and my daughter was older. Some friends and I started a weekly art group. I started drawing again. That’s when I got “serious”. As serious as I ever get. I signed on to Fine Arts Studios Online as a way to keep me working. It’s pretty much worked. And some of my friends are back in my studio with me on Mondays for “Art Nite” aka the Hampshire school of Art.
www.hampshireschoolofart.com
It's all about community now!
I look pretty mean in this picture. I am only about half as mean as I look.
Email me. please do at: suckerbeagle@gmail.com
Beckett said it and I like to say it too. "I've brooded over geraniums for years. Geraniums are artful customers. But in the end I was able to do what I liked with them."
