I remember as a child always being drawn to art. When I had saved a few dollars I bought my first two art books on the drawings of Michelangelo and Leonardo. I would sit for hours trying to copy from these drawings. In 8th grade my art teacher took the class on a field trip from our school on Long Island, NY, to New York City, to visit the Frick Collection.

 

While walking around the Frick and marveling at the superb collection of old master paintings, I was captivated by one painting in particular, Ingres portrait of Comtesse d'Haussonville. I had never in my life seen anything as extraordinary as that painting. It was at that moment I felt, or perhaps wished, that someday I would paint something as beautiful as that.

 

Growing up in Long Island, during the 1960's and 1970's, my only connection with great European paintings were through my occasional train rides to NYC to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Frick.

 

I was also growing up in the age of abstract Modern Art, which I had no interest in. There weren't a whole lot of figurative painters I was aware of and I had no where to turn to find an accomplished painter to teach me.

After school I spent more time bicycle riding and playing basketball at a local park then drawing. But my dream of painting portraits on the level of Velazquez, Hals, and Sargent (to name a few) never left me.

 

In the late 1970's, my college years, I attended both Purchase College and Rochester Institute of Technology. I was enrolled as a Fine Arts major and in 1982 received my B.F.A. from R.I.T.

 

After graduating I had no plan on how I was going to become a successful artist. The chips were very much stacked against me.

 

After being out of school for a few years, and living at home and doing odd jobs, I heard about a teacher on Long Island who gave classes in traditional painting. His name was Harold Stevenson. I called Harold with overwhelming exuberance and expressed to him on the phone that he just had to teach me. Harold told me to slow down and explained he had a one-year waiting list.

 

A year indeed passed and then one morning the phone rang and it was Harold. He told me a spot had opened in his classes and to come meet him to see if his "school" was right for me.

I grabbed my spot and spent the next four years learning from Harold, until he passed away of a terrible illness way before his time. Harold was a product of the Frank Reilly painting method which harkened back to the French Academy of the 19th century. Harold also had the privilege to have studied with Norman Rockwell one summer.  

 

I treasured every evening that I attended Harold's classes, held in his home, where I learned traditional figure painting from live models. I finally had a connection, albeit a small one, to the great painters from a past age.

 

After Harold died, I found another marvelous painting teacher, Michael Aviano, who lived and taught out of his apartment on New York's Upper Westside. Michael was a Renaissance Man. He was an outstanding portrait painter in the Grand Manner style. I studied with Michael for about two years, at which time I heard about a brand new, experimental art school in downtown Manhattan, called The New York Academy of Art.

 

The New York academy of art was conceived in the early 1980's as a tuition free drawing school. I was among the first students to study at the NYAA. In 1986, the governing board off the Academy applied to become a full fledged graduate school, being able to grant a Master of Fine Arts degree. Miraculously, they were granted their charter and I was in that first graduating class in 1986.

 

In addition to receiving my M.F. A. degree, the New York Academy of Art was also responsible for paving the way for me to finally find employment in the art field. It wasn't quite what I was expecting. I landed on my feet as a Grammar School Art Teacher at Saint Ignatius Loyola School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Saint Ignatius was my home for the next 33 years, until I retired in 2020. I loved every moment of my profession as a K-8 art teacher.

 

I met many wonderful children and their families over my many years teaching at Saint Ignatius. There is one family in particular I want to to say a few words about.

 

One afternoon at dismissal, I noticed that one of the mom's who was there to pick up her 3rd Grade son, had with her a French Easel with a sublime painting of a statue in Central Park she had been working on. I expressed my admiration for her painting and with humility dismissed her own talent and told me it were her parents who were the great painters in the family, specifically accomplished portrait painters. She told me that at Christmas I would be invited to their home to see her parents work. Without getting to detailed, her apartment and the hallway leading to the apartment were adorned with the most fantastic portraits I had seen outside of a museum. 

 

I exclaimed that her parents paintings are on par with John Singer Sargents. After a fine dinner, she placed a Celestial Globe in front of of me and told me that this globe was a gift that Sargent had given her father. Her father had met Sargent in 1924 while studying in London. Sargent was very impressed with the younger painter. 

 

She also told me that her father kept notes on painting technique and that she would make me a copy of his notes. Suffice it to say that I left dinner that night feeling that this was by far the strongest connection I had made to the Gilded Age of Painting and Old-Master Painting in general.

 

Despite having a reasonable foundation in painting, I continued to struggle with oil painting. I would teach by day and paint at night and on weekends. Not all the time, mind you, but I did keep at it. My frustration with not being able to produce a painting on a certain level that I expected from myself seemed to never end.

 

It's only recently that I am pleased with my work. After 45 years of experimenting with oil paint and a multitude of mediums with which to thin the paint (from egg yolk to varnish to chalk to even mustard), I feel I have found a technique that allows me to express myself. I am very proud of myself for sticking with it, even when it seemed hopeless. 

 

I retired as mentioned in 2020 and I now live with my wife in Palm Coast, Florida. I am becoming accustomed the local scenery and have begun to paint native landscapes and seascapes. I do hope to apply my new technique to portraiture as well. For now, I am very happy working on scenic paintings.