I guess everyone thinks at one time or another his or her life is interesting enough to assume someone else would want to read about it. It has been my experience, for the most part this just isn’t true. That may also be the case of my life but I’ve been told by many and by galleries as well as patrons and even a publisher my past and maybe my present is just unique enough to be worthy of documenting. With that said, I’m going to be writing stories of my past in no particular order.

 

A professional writer told me, (no I’m not one) the best way to do this is to imagine I’m talking to someone and just write as if I were speaking. So, if you are reading this think of us as sitting somewhere over coffee or wine with me just going on and on about my life. 

 

I was born in Watertown, NY, a small city at the Eastern end of Lake Ontario near the 1000 Islands on the St. Lawrence River. I’m told when I was born there was the only earthquake recorded in that area in the past 100 years. Maybe that makes me think I’m special but I’m no Mark Twain.

 

I was never told much about my birth or very early childhood. I know I was born with a severe cleft palette and spent much of my first year in the hospital. Many years later when I was over 40 and the only person left in my family was my grandfather I was cleaning out a lot of old things from the house were I grew up and where I was caring for him on what was his death bed, I found a stack of diaries written by my great grandmother before and during the time of my birth. She had been living with my grandparents and my mother in that same house since 1920. She lived until I was about a year old so she had written a great deal about my birth and those early first months.

 

Part of her entry on the event of my birth was, “Our boy has a hair lip & we are so sorry but Marge will take him to Syracuse hospital for plastic surgery operation.” She was a grand lady whom I never knew but was talked about with great affection by my whole family.

 

I had what I would call the perfect growing up. I lived just outside of the city or town depending on how you look at place with a population of only about 20,000. I lived in a large old farmhouse built before the Civil War. It is the home my mother grew up in and never left. My grandparents lived downstairs and my parents and I live in a small upstairs apartment. The only bathroom was downstairs so we really all lived together. I had the best of all worlds. My grandfather was a cattle dealer and we had a sort of farm but not a real working one. My father was just back from the war when I was about 18 months old and did various jobs before becoming a businessman in sales. That meant I had the advantage as I grew to see both kinds of worlds. I also had the advantage of being an only child but my mother’s brother and family lived next door on the farm and had two children a girl on year younger than me and a boy two years my junior. With that situation of our grandparents being right there I was able to choose between being an only child or have siblings depending on my mood.

 

The homestead was fairly large with the Black River on the back edge, a pond, a creek and a barn. Just across the road was a huge forest where I could go on my own and play any time I wanted from a very early age, all things that couldn’t be done today with the world as it is.

 

My birth defect wasn’t that much of a problem. I knew it existed when I got older but learned I was blessed in the fact my family found a great doctor and had it fixed so it was not really noticeable. I did learn I spent much of that first year in the hospital and that did affect me to some affect me to some extent but that is for a later tale.

 

My grandmother was a generous saint and my mother was a bit of a nut case but didn’t really learn just how much until I was an adult. There is a very long story, which will just have to play itself out in future writings.

 

I was a sort of sick kid a lot when growing up and I spent a great deal of time alone with my grandmother. My favorite activity at those times was to draw. When I was sick I would sit up in the guest bed downstairs and my grandmother would give me a whole roll of shelf paper, (for those old enough to know what that is) and I would draw this ongoing picture for yards and yards on the paper. When a holiday was approaching I my two cousins would come over and we would sit at my grandmother’s dining room table and I would give directions as to how we needed to make puppets by drawing pictures, cutting them out and pasting them on Popsicle sticks. I would then draw this long story as background on another roll of shelf paper and they would color it all in.

 

Then I would get a cardboard box and build a sort of puppet theatre. I would get sticks and put the shelf paper on one side and stretch it to the other on the other side. I could then roll the paper though to make the background change. My cousins and I would make up a long story, usually or always with me, the oldest in charge. Then when the holiday dinner was done with the whole family there, including my aunt and uncle, we would set up chairs in the living room and invite everyone to come in for the price of a penny. We had the puppet show set up on the back of the couch and the three of us would go back there and put on this show with my cousins, Suzy and Sandy doing the puppets and voices while I slowly moved the background along.

 

As I write this and see it in my mind it is quite impressive but I’m sure the reality of it was pretty primitive and very hooky. It is a very good thing “we can’t go back again.”

 

I’m telling this whole story to explain how I was always drawing and trying to be creative. I don’t know how many forts I build in the woods or how many boats or rafts I built for the creek or pond. Many years later, when my grandfather was home and near death my cousins were on the porch talking when Suzy remembered me building a helicopter out of scrap wood and admitted she was so upset when she found out it wasn’t really going to fly as I had promised. I think that is more of an observation as to her naïveté than my skills as an aeronautical engineer.

 

The other big memory I have from early childhood and my art career was Christmas. In those days sending and receiving huge amounts of Christmas cards was the norm. My grandmother had an address book with a few hundred names and each one got a card. She received as many and they were hung all over the house around door casings, along the ceiling and on every horizontal surface. My favorite thing to do was to set up a card table in her living room and copy all the cards containing winter scenes. They were simple pencil drawings but I found I learned a great deal about not just reproducing an image but quite about shading as well.

 

There are many other incidents that come to mind concerning my love of drawing and art as a child but those will find their way into the story as time go on. For now, let it just be said I had a great childhood and my drawing and creative spirit was always present. I was no precocious genius as my mother kept telling me I was, I was pretty normal really but I did love to draw and spent most of my time either alone or with my two cousins. Practically no interaction with other kids my age until school years and then very little, but that is all another story.