Support a Resilient Artist's Return to Painting

I am seventy-five years old. My professional career, which spanned some fifty years was spent as a photographer turned filmmaker, but I graduated from college with a Masters Degree in Fine Art, specifically painting.

In late 2010, I was hospitalized with a life-altering event. A lung was removed due to a benign carcinoid tumor at the entrance to my left lung, causing it to collapse. My condition was exacerbated by pneumonia in the other lung. Hospitalization took three weeks followed by a month of recuperation at home. Things only got worse from there and I went back to the hospital with a serious infection in the cavity left by the lung’s removal. I was again hospitalized, this time for a month as they drained the infected fluids over several days, about five liters in all. After that, I was an outpatient on daily IV antibiotics for a month.

The net effect of this on my overall health was to diminish my stamina and energy. Where previously I would ride my bike about fifty miles a week for exercise, I am now unable to ride even short distances without gasping for air. I get my exercise by shopping for groceries in big box stores because I find that even walking a block and back in my neighborhood is exhausting, especially in the heat and humidity.

I have been consigned to a forced retirement. My age and disability render me unemployable as defined by the algorithms that serve as the gatekeepers of professional employment. Life’s travails have negatively impacted my financial well-being, between the hospitalization, a divorce and the late-stage failure of my business as technology and the market changed dramatically. Add to that the fourteen years I have been living on what remained, and I am now financially exhausted as well.

I am doing what I can for myself on my own. With my creative background, I have returned to painting. My eyes are not what they were as a young man. Four surgeries in the past year, and while each eye sees differently, taken together I can see reasonably well, certainly enough to paint. My motor skills are also that of an older man, but I have adapted my technique and style and believe I am a better painter today than I was as a young man.

My goal in seeking funding is to provide enough funds for art supplies. Much of that will be used to purchase new canvasses, but I currently have twenty-seven paintings that need framing, so the purchase of frames will be a large expense. My paintings are professional enough to attract a gallery warranting a one-man show. Most of them are highly saleable and can easily supplement my income, which consists entirely of social security. Since the paintings vary in size from 11x14 to 40x84 and 60x84, with many 16x20’s and a few 36x48’s and 24x36’s in between, they range in price enough to make them affordable to most people looking for original art for their home or a corporate purchase for a large space.

I am seeking $11,500 with $7,500 of that to be used to supplement my income at the rate of $1,500 for five months, providing me with the time to complete many more paintings, secure a gallery and wait for a show. With health insurance and routine bills, even on my slashed budget, currently, my social security leaves me with a shortfall. Inflation has hit me hard and changes in my Medicare costs have increased to the point that each month I need supplemental income to manage. While I am eating less and losing weight, it’s not enough to live a normal life. All this is creating anxiety and depression. I want to normalize my life by providing for myself in the ways I can. This funding will jump-start and reinvigorate my return to painting as a means of income.

I paint exclusively in oils. My imagery consists of socially conscious subject matter portrayed through metaphors regarding late-stage life, in humans, plants and in nature, expressing fading beauty and the sorrow of passing. The autumn of life is glorious and colorful, the last hurrah before moving on.

My paintings range in size from 11x14 to up to 7 feet. I start with a black gesso canvas, and then draw my subject, freehand using chalk pastel’s, to define the various areas, colors and composition of the painting. Many decisions are made at this level, however, I do not conform to a rigid plan for the application of the paint. Rather, I take risks to welcome the process of discovery, often painting over passages that I am enamored with for the sake of the painting as a whole. Mistakes are a blessing for they create new paths that allow the paint to inform me. At times, my brush work is very tight and at other times it is very loose, sometimes literal but always expressive. I am not concerned about an accurate representation, but more so conveying the emotion of the image. To that end, certain paintings of the series on plant-based forms are fictional. They are fantasies, idealized with color and shape for metaphorical reasons. Images when shown together speak one to the other. They complement each other both in color and form, but also in meaning, amplified by the proximity of the other works. What one suggests, the other completes. Life is beautiful, even as it flickers away. Acceptance is the finality.

Painting is a form of nonverbal communication that allows the viewer to complete its meaning. To paint well, one must relinquish control to the paint itself. Rather than control the paint, the paint controls me, informing my every decision in a random manner. I must enter the process with no preconceptions and be open to going where it takes me, often not where I expect.

I graduated with a Masters Degree in painting in 1973 but turned to photography to support myself and my family. In the last year, I have returned to painting and have done twenty-seven paintings in all since then. In spite of my declining eyesight and motor skills, my painting is better now than it has ever been, and I am informed with new enthusiasm. Each painting is an evolving exploration of the process itself and consequently the body of work in the past year spans several styles, but the underlying motivation is the same. Style is but an adaptation of expression best suited for the communication of meaning.

Art, particularly painting taps the subconscious mind of the viewer and invites participation, creating both an emotional and intellectual interpretation from the range of the viewer's experience. I paint in oils speaking indirectly through metaphors. Much of my work is motivated by social-consciousness. Reflecting on a painting, one reflects oneself and our place in the world.