James
Rodgers on location in Provincetown, MA. |
From the time he was ten years old, Jim
Rodgers says, he liked to paint. He kept his first paint box,
a gift from his mother, for nine years, and used it to paint
the ceiling of his bedroom with a portrait of the intractable
psychedelically gifted guitarist Jimmy Hendrix ─ an
inspiration that overtook him after viewing the story of
Michelangelo’s life in the movie, The Agony and
the Ecstasy.
While the commission of the Jimi Hendrix
painting was his own doing, not that of a Pope, and his
bedroom is no Sistine Chapel, the young painter that
envisioned a mural on his bedroom ceiling, |
inspired by the
effort of another painter who saw The Creation on ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel, displays the kind of typical determination that is a
necessary ingredient for anyone intent on making one’s avocation
in life one’s life’s work.
For Rodgers, painting was never an option. It’s
what he does and has done for as long as he can remember. In high
school Rodgers spent his time “drawing, painting and also reading a
tremendous amount on art and art history. My concept of an artist,”
he says, “is to have a large base to draw from.”
His life as a vagabond began when, at eighteen,
and immediately after graduation, he set out to establish himself as a
New Orleans artist. He began his journey with fifty-two dollars in his
pocket and a heart full of dreams. That was all he needed during a
period when, he says, he was “much younger and had more energy.”
Drawing inspiration from the life of Norman Rockwell, Rodgers says he
never looked back or regretted the direction his chaotic life took
him. Inspiration to paint is where you find it. “It doesn’t take
much to inspire me,” he says, “just a word like ‘bebop’ or a
glance out a car window and I’m off to the studio to create.”
A year after arriving in New Orleans, however,
and thanks to the financial support of his father who paid for his bus
fare and schooling, he decided to make the big move to New York. The
city afforded a young Rodgers the opportunity to study the French
Atelier style under the guidance of Frank Mason, an instructor whose
enormous talent was obvious, but to the more laid back Rodgers,
someone whose “all consuming demeanor didn’t match my being raised
in a more nurturing atmosphere.” Rodgers nonetheless absorbed a
great deal from Mason, as he has done throughout the years in his
association with other artists. Note, for example, how Rodgers’
“Peonies and Shakespeare”- has the look of Mason’s “Soup
Tureen and Putti”. (See: http://www.amberalchemy.com/still.html)
“I like to take portions of others’ concepts and try to integrate
them into my work. But my work always ends up looking like mine.”
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"Peonies
and Shakespeare", o/p, 16"x20"
© by James
Rodgers
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While in New York, Rodgers sought out and met
other artists applying himself to learning from their
techniques and experiences.
“When I studied in New York for the first time,” he
says, “I spent lots of time roaming the city visiting the
numerous museums and bookstores. It was a real Bohemian
cultural epiphany.” He
was only twenty years old. His second opportunity came when he
met and befriended the talented Gregg Kruetz. Again, Rodgers
enjoyed the style and thought the experience exhilarating, but
found Kruetz’ work ethic hard to absorb. He then became
Richard Pionk’s monitor on Sunday afternoons at the League,
and later studied with Art Maynard, an instructor at the |
Ridgewood Art Institute, a
man whom, he says with some amusement, was his friend as well as his
teacher. Rodgers
also maintains a friendship with John Traynor, another artist he met
with and studied under while in New York and with whom he has shared
gallery space.
Throughout this period, Rodgers says he managed
to “maintain a day job and still paint thirty to forty hours a
week.”
Rodgers, now approaching 46, says that he may
have held as many as “a hundred jobs to support myself through my
twenties”, and relocated over thirty times during that same period,
working as a chef and kitchen manager in Las Vegas, where he met his
wife, Tammy, to various jobs in Daytona, New Orleans, Connecticut and
Cincinnati. But when you’re working at your craft, as he has over
the years, to the point that he now produces upwards of 150 paintings
a year, you do what you have to do to survive until you no longer have
to share your time. “I
guess I prefer the much riskier world of fine art,” he says. “I
don’t have a stipend.” The pressure to paint to live “gets you
up in the morning and focused,” he says. “You know that if you
don’t produce, you don’t eat.”
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"Late
Blooms, Edgartown", o/p, 12"x16"
© by James
Rodgers
|
All in all, Rodgers says his accumulated
experience studying under various established artists amounted to
about a year of formal student/instructor training. Even though he is
a prolific and accomplished artist today, his lack of formal art
education training “is one of the things I would probably change if
I could,” adding, “education is more advantageous because it
allows you more of a foundation to base your creativity.”
Today, working from his home studio in New
Jersey, living with his wife and daughter, Tosha,Rodgers has a
subject matter that is eclectic, and a medium - oil on board - that he prefers.
“I like a very rigid support when I
paint,” he says. “It shows all the mistakes |
and forces you to be
more accurate.”
A plein air painter who enjoys time spent outside, Rodgers says he doesn’t yet sell
his plein-air work. He sells only what he produces in his studio. “I
paint landscapes and florals, but I also paint street scenes and a
genre like Jazz nightclubs and kitchen scenes.” His works, “Late
Bloom, Edgartown” and “Evening View from Colt’s Point”, two
works on display at his upcoming show on August 24th , at Winstanley-Roark
Fine Arts in Dennis, MA, capture the subtle, nuance almost gauzy
outdoor style typical of the Boston School.
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"Evening
View from Colts Point", o/p, 30"x 40"
© by
James Rodgers
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One amusing aside, when asked about his prolific
production of work each year, Rodgers says “I don’t usually keep a
painting past two years. After that time it goes to my mom so she can
stare at my non-successes.”
Rodgers sums up his art this way: “My concept
for my art is to take a traditional or classical approach and
interject it with concepts of impressionism and even abstract
art that I find appealing. My metaphor for my art is that I
paint in the jazz mode of Jobim’s bossa nova, a concept he
referred to as ‘the happy sadness’ just another way of
stating romanticism.”
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