Off the Cuff: A Rare Find

Charles Shepard, President & CEO

I think we all probably dream off and on about unexpectedly discovering a “rare” piece of art that might really be worth something, such as a Pollock in the attic or a Chihuly in the annual neighborhood yard sale. My rare find appeared via UPS in a large brown box courtesy of one of my younger brothers, who found it clearing out my parents’ Maine home in preparation for selling it. To be sure, this “find” was certainly not in the same league as a Pollock or Chihuly, so there was no need to speed-dial my financial advisor. This “rare find” was one of my early paintings from the ’70s, featured in my first solo show in an art gallery. I was sure this would lead the art world press to my bedroom studio in the backwoods of Maine. That, of course, did not happen; but, I did succeed in selling a few of the paintings, including this large abstract of a sailboat cutting a sharp diagonal across the stylized blue waters of the canvas that I was presently unwrapping. As often happens when galleries sell an artist’s work, the payment I received for each sale over the course of my month-long exhibition came from the gallery, not from the actual buyer; I happily cashed the checks without any idea of who was purchasing. The gallery priced this piece at $1,000, and my 60% share of the sale not only covered six month’s rent but gave me confidence: I might have a shot in the art game.

A lot of young artists back then were striving to distance themselves from illusionism and realism by flattening the picture plane–all the shapes and forms of the composition floated on the surface of the painting with as little depth of field as possible. That’s exactly the effect I was after, although I did give some of my geometric forms a little more dimension to create visual tension between, specifically, the little sailboat and the broad expanse of the flat, blue sea. That said, I had more on my mind than simply color, line, and form in all my paintings of that time. The sailboat I was thinking about was my stepdad’s, and he liked nothing better than to haul anchor and sail up and down the coast of Maine. He taught me how to rig the sails, read charts, use the compass to plot a course, and find a safe port. From him I learned that sailing was, to a degree, more about taking responsibility than about freedom but, if you did your job on deck, you certainly would feel a heightened sense of being free as the wind filled the sails. Learning to sail with him gave me a new perspective on how to navigate my life, and the sailboat itself became a symbol to me of progress and transition. So, my theoretically “contemporary” painting was, in truth, a pretty traditional personal statement: after zigzagging through some flat seas, I’m sailing into new, uncharted waters full of hope and optimism.

Having had a solo show and made a few sales, I felt a new level of confidence which led me to quit my day job and enroll at the University of Maine with the intent to study painting in a more rigorous environment. As soon as I found a small apartment just off campus and unpacked my stuff I made an appointment with one of the painting professors to show him my work and get some advice as to the classes I should take in the fall. On the arranged day I packed my portfolio with sketches, some finished paintings on canvas board, and a packet of pictures of the paintings that I’d just sold and marched across campus to the art department. I was walking on air as I strode through the department’s front door; the smell of oil paint permeated the space outside the first studio and, in the second studio, sparks were flying from a hot torch as someone welded a small steel armature to a rectangle gripped in a vice. This is art, man! This is the art world and I am so IN it! At the reception desk, I told the student attendant that I was here to meet with Professor Ron Ghiz, and she pointed me toward a conference room across the hall and told me Ron would soon join me. I went in and started spreading my things out on a long table and waited. In my mind, I was thinking that life just couldn’t get any better! My new teacher Ron would be joining me in a minute, and we’d talk about painting and promise and poetry and theories. We’d talk art!

One of the most predictable things in life, unfortunately, is that we, as individuals wound up in the moment, filled with irrational enthusiasm as we stand at the threshold of our glowing futures, almost always fail to account for what Bob Dylan so famously sang about: “a simple twist of fate”.

This Dylanesque truth should have occurred to me when Professor Ron Ghiz came into the room and said “Hello,” to which I replied, “Hi, Ron”, to which he replied cooly: “Professor Ghiz, please.” “I’m sorry,” I offered. “Thank you for meeting with me, Professor Ghiz, I’m excited to hear what you think of my work.” Ever the optimist, I forged on past this little bump in our conversational road and began explaining my artistic strategies for each of the pieces laying on the table as he quietly moved from one to the next. Using my best “art-speak”, I talked about my quest to flatten the picture plane, to use geometry to evoke a Neo-Cubist voice, to use layers of semi-transparent glazes to create spatial harmonies and…I stopped as I noticed his hand signal me to stop talking. “Your thinking about painting and your process of painting are way out of sync,” announced Professor Ghiz. “You theorize that you are making cutting edge contemporary paintings”, said he, “But the paintings that you are showing me here are, in fact, naïve, sentimental, and only semi-abstract. If you want to study painting in this department, you need to wrap all these things up, stick them in a closet, and start all over. And, honestly, given all your theories about art, you might want to hedge your bets by signing up for art history courses in case your studio classes don’t work out.” With that, our meeting ended and he was gone before I could thank him for his time–thank him for so abruptly yanking the rug out from under my naïve, simplistic feet. I couldn’t look the student receptionist in the eye as I trudged out the front door of the art department, the strap of my portfolio now cutting painfully into my shoulder as I re-crossed campus feeling that I, indeed, had just suffered a classic twist of fate.

And, in some respects, I had. I was soon to be reminded that to twist was to turn, and my fate was still very much in motion. Professor Ghiz’s reaction to my work did turn my dream of being a painter upside down, but his advice about considering courses in art history added some momentum to the trajectory of the turn; and, while the needle on my personal wheel of fortune did land on art making, it came solidly to rest on a new dream – that of art interpretation and exhibition making fueled by my love for art theory, art history, and art presentation. I still made art for my own enjoyment, but I put most of my time and energy expanding my knowledge of art history and honing my curatorial skills to a level that, in time, opened the door to the career that I have now successfully pursued for the past 41 years.

This brings me back to the packing box I found the other day on my front porch. My “find” was rare in the sense of the sudden appearance of a long-forgotten painting, but more rare still in the significance of that particular painting as an agent of change in my life, even if the change, ultimately, wasn’t the one that I first predicted. For the confidence that painting gave me all those years ago, I might never have gone to college. For the impact of its non-acceptance, I might never have pursued art history and become a museum director. If that art professor had looked at my paintings and offered just a little more encouragement, I might have missed my personal turn in the road. Instead, sitting in my office at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art this afternoon, I offer a thankful prayer to my former professor for his tough critique which, in a true twist of fate, led me into the career that has brought me joy every day of my life.