The First Painting I Ever Saw

My parents had a print of a European harbor scene that occupied a place of honor in my boyhood home. It hung over our wooden record cabinet, or “hi-fi” as we called it. 

Although I remember gazing dreamily at the magical world it opened into, I have no idea who painted the original. As closely as I can recall, it looked something like this:

Maybe it was Dutch. All I know is that it had boats with sails, a mist-veiled coast, and a big blowzy sky.

Other than that print and the intriguing stained glass windows in Christ Church, Oyster Bay, Long Island, the only other art I saw as a young child was the ceiling mural of the Oyster BayPost Office.

This was really something special. It was, clearly, a real painting (a fresco, actually). It was a work of elegance and imagination. It was really a magical world. And it was on the ceiling!

Arthur Sturges's ceiling mural in the U.S. Post Office, Oyster Bay, Long Island

Funded by the depression government’s Works Project Administration program, “the vaulted ceiling was painted by Peixotto assistant, Arthur Sturges and depicts beautiful women representing different countries sending mail to North America on ships and planes. Mercury, the winged messenger, sits atop the dome to receive the mail with speed.” (Thank you WikiPedia!)

A ceiling that showed the sky! And even gods and goddesses inhabiting what appeared to be Heaven! But these celestial beings were doing things with little ships and planes -  implying that whatever was going on up there had something to do with the modern world we were standing in down here!

Art, then, was a sort of portal to another world that reflected back something about this one. I can still dimly recall the visit on which a grownup (either my mother or my grandmother) first pointed up at it. And now I’m painting skies myself.

New Sky, Oil on Wood, 18"x18," 2011

Plum Island Dusk, Oil on Canvas, 8" x 10," 2010

Plum Island Redux, Oil on Wood, 24" x  36," 2011

One of the secrets of painting effective skies, I think, is to watch what you're doing at the horizon. Blending the lowest, most distant clouds into wisps and streaks of light and color helps provide the sense of receding space. You get the feeling that the clouds highest in the picture are closest, while those furthest away gradually recede along the curvature - the "vaulted ceiling" - of the heavens.

Postscript

At the same post office, there’s an impressive ornamental flagpole base outside with an amusing story that goes with it (see “The Man in the Shed”). At the same time that the murals were done, the WPA sent a little-known immigrant from Bologna, Italy, named Leo Lentelli to produce a series of sculptures here. 

The story goes that once his chunk of granite had been put in place, Leo built a little shed around it. There he worked, shielding himself from the winter winds that rip through my old coastal hometown in the winter. Thanks Leo - you rule.