Fen Painting

My secret life as an artist began when I was a Hollywood scriptwriter and producer of award-winning television shows. Though I was embedded in the world of high-powered superstars, agents and studio executives my hero was the wife of a fellow producer who had a tiny art studio in the wings of their sprawling New York City coop. The beauty she created and her humble lack of need for attention and notoriety awed me. While her husband and I were written about in newspapers, honored by our colleges, walked the red carpet she was wholly satisfied with quietly creating her art and possibly getting a show in an obscure, downtown gallery. A year later I silently launched my secret life as an artist. While working on a hit TV show I bought a house with loads of blank walls and no art. At first I was upset when I discovered that the previous owner had left a stack of eight-foot by ten-foot sheets of plywood in the basement. A week before I’d seen a large, expensive painting in a SoHo Gallery, a bold color field of red and black. Hmm, I thought, these sheets of plywood were exactly the same size. A quick trip to the local art supply store and I had my first color field hanging over my bed, joined soon by eight-foot by ten-foot color fields in the living room and den. Over the next several decades my secret life as an artist took me from makeshift studios in spare bedrooms, to basements, to garages until I eventually settled into a large workshop at an industrial park in Cathedral City. I never showed any of my artwork to anyone; the only people to see it were family members, dinner guests, plumbers and dishwashing repairmen. Finally, my wife Karyn had enough, “I don’t care what you say. I’m getting your work out there.” She did. For the past year and- a-half my paintings and sculpture have been seen in galleries, exhibitions, and artist studio tours. Though I’m still relatively new at exhibiting my artwork there’s no escaping the truth: For better or worse, my secret is out.