Since my early youth, three things were profound in my life: airplanes, poetry and art, as demonstrated by the early impressionists; mainly those works by Claude Monet (1840-1926).  I began dabbling in oils in 1948 while a member of the air force, stationed with the 91st fighter squadron at Oahu, TH  (Hawaii was a territory then).; nothing useful; nothing promising. I continued from paint by numbers to cheap tubes of oil and canvas board. Still no promise, but the "love" was still there. In 1954, while stationed at Ramstein AB in W. Germany, I met a fellow at the base arts and crafts hobby shop who was an artist of sorts. He worked well with charcoal and some oil. That's when I first began paying serious attention to painting in oil.

 

During that year I produced a few dozen landscape paintings on canvas board that were much less than acceptable... but I even sold some of them. Encouraging. When I returned to the states and retired from the military I took a flying job in Los Angeles. That's where I stayed for a year.  Then I came back to Phoenix, Arizona, and opened a flight school which grew to 15 airplanes. After 7 years of climbing out of one airplane and into another, I decided I'd had enough. (Another long story). I enrolled in art classes at Glendale (AZ) community college.

 

After three months of lessons I was ready to become a master... I thought.  I joined a Glendale (AZ) Art Group, turned one room of a newly purchased home into an art studio. I went to a place called Phoenix Manor where my mother and father resided, posted a note on the bulletin board there, that said, "Art Classes. A finished painting every Lesson." In a week I had 10 students, none of whom were under 60 years of age. I had to go out and buy a dozen good easels. And I Did. I figured the best way to learn how to paint would be to teach it. I taught for more than a year, learning more than my students as I plodded along. But I was acquiring many paintings to exhibit with the art club. My first juries exhibit with the art group featured only two paintings that were accepted: an 18" X 24" Oil on Canvas of the Superstition Mountains near Mesa, Arizona; the second, a vase of flowers that didn't look like flowers. In the landscape division, my Superstition Mountain effort took first place, a beautiful blue ribbon and $50.00; in the still life division, my "flowers In A Vase" took second place. I was elated. So I opted to apply for membership in the elite Firebird Artists, a well known group in the Phoenix area. I was accepted and began exhibiting in the nearby malls several times a month.

 

It was during that time that I learned about an artist named, Coulton Waugh. I bought his book and feverishly studied every line. Coulton Waugh didn't use brushes, he used painting knives! He used color much like the old impressionists. He set color against color in such a manner that his colors seemed to vibrate.  I tried his technique and people seemed to like the style. But it was difficult. And one had to be intimate with color and how it reacts. My first success with knife painting were scenes where clouds covered most of the canvass. I knew clouds. I loved the willoughy fair weather cumulus I'd slide my plane into giving me the sensation of greater speed. Clouds I knew about. And clouds I learned were easy for me to paint. I was achieving another plateau. 

 

Soon I was ready for my first Firebird Artists exhibit in Phoenix. It was there I quickly learned that people who didn't know art from bananas, liked thick oil paint on a canvas.  My first exhibit with the Firebird Artists began Friday afternoon and was to end Sunday evening at 5 p.m. There were about 100 artists of various mediums exhibiting. I had 20 paintings to sell; ones that I had painted along with my students. None were great paintings; some were almost good. But by noon Sunday I had sold 14 at giveaway prices! Considering that I still had a half dozen 16" X 20" canvases with me, I set up one on my easel and began splattering oils on it using a painting knife. The menagerie seemed to take the shape of a vase, so I added splotches of paint of various colors straight from the tube that, from a short distance, took the appearance of flowers. In 15 minutes I had covered the entire canvas and added some cool colors to the dark areas. People had already begun gathering around me. The paint was very thick. A woman asked, "Don't you use brushes." I replied. "I used to." She said, "Can I buy that painting?" I said, "$30.00 and if you drop it while bringing it home and it lands face down, it's your fault. You've then an abstract!"  She handed my a fifty dollar bill and pointed to an unsold framed painting. "Can I have that frame for this painting? I gave her the frame that I paid only $12.00 for.  Before the day ended, I had run out of canvasses. I sold every canvass I covered with oil paint that day; each one completed in less less 20 minutes!  From that day on I put away the brushes!

 

In the years that followed, up to 1987, I had sold nearly 200 paintings.... and gave friends and relative -- and my children bunches of them. That's when I embrace the cardinal rule. Never give away a painting.  But my success was short lived. My eyes were going bad. My work had never produced the quality I had always wanted but people seemed to like my knife paintings.  But my eyes were steadily getting worse; they watered so that everything turned fuzzy to me. I needed glasses for close vision. distant vision, middle vision. I finally quit. Last October-January, at the Naval Hospital at Camp Lejeune, NC, a marvelous man, Navy Commander, James Gallagher gave me a new set of eyes, including implants. He also chauffeured me around like I was king of the hill. But he is the king and I'll never forget him. Damn, if I could have, I'd have joined the navy! Now I can see. Colors pop up and show themselves clearly and I marvel at my ability to even ready the small print on a package of sweet and low... and without glasses.

 

I have returned. I am painting again.  I like to think that Claude Monet stands by me when I work.  Mostly I know that it is the Lord, my God, who has enabled me to be complete.

 Hector John Gaudreau