Earliest Artwork

posted February 8, 2008

I was born with a cleft palette. It was, I learned many years later, very severe. I was never told about this until I was a teen and even then, for some reason, we just never discussed it and I never seemed to be very curious until years later. When I was born, my mother’s grandmother on my grandmother’s side lived with the family and had since my grandparents were married. She was a wonderful old lady whom I never knew, she died when I was about a year old, and she was an avid diary writer. She wrote down every day of my early life. I didn’t know any of these diaries existed until many years later when I went through my families belongings in 1987 when I was there taking care of Gramp who died that fall just prior to turning 93. In digging around the closets I found about a dozen diaries written by my great-grandmother. For the first time I was able to learn more details about my birth and the months following as I was moved from hospital to hospital. I have never followed any normal path in life. I’ve been everything from living in the woods raising goats to a reactor operator in a nuclear power plant, from making a sort of living building reproductions of antique furniture to president of an advertising agency, from managing 3 beef ranches in Tennessee to art director for an engineering firm and yes, the list goes on. All my life I’ve been interested in art or at least painting and drawing. When I was very little I can remember being home sick quite a bit. I would sit up in bed and my grandmother would bring me a roll of shelf paper and I would sit there with a cardboard on my lap and just keep drawing an endless story of soldiers and dragons and just cities and people. Every Christmas season I would sit at a card table in my grandmother’s living room with my two younger cousins. In those days Christmas cards where a big thing. My grandmother would get hundreds and send out as many. I would sit there and go through the cards and pick out all that had original artwork on them and then copy the drawings over and over on more shelf paper. I wish someone had saved them. Not that they were all that good but it would be fun to look at them now and see just how good or bad I was at 8 years old. My aunt’s sister-in-law, (don’t try to figure out that one) worked for Crayola. Back in those days Crayola hired her to play with all their products and come up with projects for teachers in grammar schools. She would then travel around giving demos to schools. She had just tons of art supplies around and about every two months she would send me from, Penn. A box with dozens of paint and crayon sets. I was never without some sort of art supplies. She lived in Downingtown, PA. Where my father was born and grew up. I would go down there from NY a few times a year and each time, my uncle would take me off to see her. She was as close to Auntie Mame as I ever knew. Her house was full of strange things such as a big cigar store Indian always dressed in different clothes and all sorts of paintings and sculptures all over the place. My uncle wasn’t allowed to drink at home so this was his way to sneak out. She always had a group of interesting and sometimes strange friends hanging out in the back yard and he would sit there and drink whisky with them while my aunt Mary would take me off into the house and show me all the new stuff. She always asked about my painting and offered suggestions. I didn’t know it at the time but it really was a great contact with some sort of art world and wish I had taken more advantage of it. I do remember, when I left I always felt as if I should go right home and start drawing. I think I did most times.