I remember drawing a lot when I was a kid. The first example I still have was from when I was about 8 years old when I would draw my sister's parakeet. It was a crude cartoonish 8-year-old's version of a parakeet, but it got the point across. In grade school all of my notebooks were filled with drawings of the Enterprise from Star Trek. Those were probably the most accurate drawings I made to that point. I also loved drawing the miniaturization machine from the Fantastic Voyage cartoon, as well as the Voyager (the ship in the show).

Before I plunged fully back into music in the late 1980s, at a time when I was feeling like my writing wasn't going anywhere (musical or otherwise), I shifted gears and took up a different art: painting. Throughout high school I took art classes and always got mediocre grades, and deservedly so. I had never received any formal training in those classes; the art teacher basically told us, "Draw something", or "Paint something", but I don't recall ever getting any formal training in techniques such as color mixing and perspective. So most of my attempts were pretty inept. I learned more from studying old Peanuts comic strips and creating comic books with some friends. My final art project in high school was attempting to paint the famous "bottle" of the Mount Tom range reflected in Easthampton's Nashawannuck pond. It looked like a cartoon.

My deep interest in art didn't start until my junior year in college, when I was at the University of Massachusetts. I had purchased from the local Stop & Shop grocery store a sizeable volume on the history of art in 1978. It consisted of large-format books about a quarter inch thick, one on each major artistic figure through the ages. The entire collection was about five inches thick. Many of the volumes were revelations to me. I was most taken with Edouard Manet. His work seemed so vibrant and fresh. But I loved so many others: Goya, Monet, Titian, Rembrant.... I finally began to recognize each artist's unique style. I got some canvas from a local art store along with some acrylic paint and started my journey. One of my first attempts was to paint my mother and father. The result was absolutely demonic and I tried to figure out what I was doing wrong. I was using paint like a pencil and still drawing cartoons. I watched Bill Alexander and Bob Ross on PBS, how they seemed to just smear color onto a canvas and out of it emerged a beautiful impressionistic scene. Their landscapes, painted in a mere half-hour, seemed miraculous. I noticed all the different brushes they used and their palette of multiple colors at their disposal. I'm sure there was a reason why they chose the colors they did, but I couldn't comprehend it at that point. What I did instead was to put blobs of three primary colors on my palette, since I knew from that I could make any color I desired. I would mix them directly on the palette as I needed. I started focusing on using paint to create light and shadow. My early attempts were still pretty terrible, but I was gradually getting away from cartoons.

At UMass, I took classes in scene design. For the first time, I learned foundational art techniques like perspective. It opened up a whole new world for me. It seemed magical. I got a big sketch pad and began drawing random lines and then connecting them to vanishing points. I can't remember our design teacher's name. I remember he looked like Jeff Lynne from Electric Light Orchestra and he had a British accent. But he gave us terrific assignments, gradually building up our skills. Eventually we were creating 3-dimensional models of our sketches. I remember building a scale recreation of the Holyoke apartment where I lived. The capstone project was the set design for a medieval play. I created my stage as a large stepped cross that I painted to resemble marble. I lined it with thin brass strips and coated it with acrylic polymer to give it a polished stone appearance. I got an A on that project and was quite proud that I had come so far in such a short time.

At home I began trying to recreate the paintings from the art books. I gradually taught myself simply by imitating what I saw. I particularly loved the impressionists and that's where I started. One of my earliest attempts was imitating Goya's "Senora Sabasa Garcia". Another was a tongue-in-cheek copy of a Titian self-portrait, substituting my own face. I was fascinated how slightly darker streaks in her veil could create the illusion of deeper creases in the fabric. Slightly darker accents under her eyes could make her appear suspicious. All it took was a very subtle change in color to create a dramatically different effect.

I created lots of pencil sketches as well, many still lifes. I filled an entire sketchbook with renderings of hypothetical roller coasters, both with a side view and an overhead view. I found the practice very relaxing. Eventually I attempted more complex paintings, re-rendering album covers I had. I was pretty proud of those and decided to give them to friends and relatives as Christmas gifts. Most of the recipients quietly discarded them.

To this day, I have very few example of my work from that period outside of some blurry photos I took. Since I had so little money back then, many of my paintings were applied to pieces of an old roll of vinyl wallpaper someone had given me. The main lesson I learned was that there was no magic to art; it was a skill that could be learned if I simply applied myself to it for long enough. My journey gave me a deeper appreciation of the true masters of the craft. Perhaps one day I'll continue my explorations.