Saturday, January 19, 2008

AN ARTIST BEGINS


My first memories are of drawing. I always tried to reach higher than my body would permit. I tied balloons to cardboard boxes, I made wings out of refrigerator crates and jumped off sheds.



As my injuries increased, so did my sophistication. Eventually I acquired a two cycle engine and tied the governor down and attached it and a homemade propeller to a full sized home built monoplane and cranked it off. The whole thing shook apart. Did I say sophistication?



The end of that was I did actually fly about twenty seconds in a high March wind with a rope attached to my contraption and all my buddies pulling. The landing was a bit disappointing but not disastrous. They did, however, have to use wire cutters to extract me from the thing.

Nobody laughed to much, however, because I would fight when derided.



My painting of that event hangs in a private collection. I kept it for years before I would let it go.



I've been drawing and sculpting clay since I was in preschool and before. My mother would have to drag me all the way backwards from the preschool to the car with me screaming "No! They will get my clay". They always did.



Babysitting me was always simple at home. I would lie on the floor for hours with a sheet of discarded butcher paper drawing images from my mind.



When I graduated Art Institute of Pittsburgh, I joined an advertising agency as their visualizing sketch artist, designing print ads with a broad point pencil somewhat like a carpenters flat leaded pencil. Ad agencies didn't pay artist well and so I moved my art back to private again and became an account executive but I never quit painting and sculpting



Eventually, stock market trading became a side interest and for several years, my main profession. I did not, however, quit paint and sculpting in those years.



I left the stock market proper at 55 and became, once again, a full time painter-sculptor.

I am now back in my comfort zone.

Flywheel