Art creativity of all kinds has been an important part of my life as long as I can remember. I was painting and drawing from my earliest years. I wrote my first book at the age of 10. In elementary school, I illustrated my class notebooks with drawings and sketches that my teachers loved. Seeing that, my best friend, Vita Palmieri, talked me into illustrating his notebooks, too. That significantly raised his grades until, feeling used, I signed one of the illustrations – in pen. Boy, was Vito mad!
In high school, I took art classes including a summer “Art in the Park” camp in Stanley Park in Vancouver Canada. Along with other artists, I also painted a mural on plywood panels surrounding a construction site in downtown Vancouver. In my senior year, I created a small sculpture that was featured in the annual yearbook. Even on a Church mission to France, I painted panels to do street teaching. My missionary partner was so inspired that he later studied art and became a well-known landscape artist.
After my marriage to the talented Merry Huntamer and the arrival of children, my time and energy went to family, Church, and career activities. There was little time for art. I did manage to illustrate a children’s book that one of my professors was writing. I was also assigned to paint large research tools for a study he was performing. After graduation, I became a university professor and eventually a director of a master’s program. Art remained on the back burner except for some painting one summer in 1994 in France. I had other brief spurts of painting a few pieces every 15 years or so. Most of my creative energy was spent on writing over 50 research articles and book chapters, the writing of several 400+ page family histories, and a brief burst of poetry in 2002. I also created and heavily illustrated many elaborate PowerPoints to support my teaching. It wasn’t until I was working on this website that I realized that all this writing was also a form of art expression. It involved the creation, modification, and final presentation of a piece of work designed to affect others – “art.” Hence, I have included a Writing Gallery in this website to also share some of this kind of art.
I retired in 2018 and was immediately hired by a local businessman to ghost-write a 400-page technical book for him. Many of the points I was writing needed the support of diagrams and I drew over 50 illustrations. To keep things light, I drew most of them in a cartoon style. Creating that art re-ignited a flame and passion. It led to my painting Christmas portraits for each of our 12 grandchildren. It was a short leap from there to creating portraits of friends, the children of friends, and then to commissioned paintings – to cover the costs of supplies and paints. My sweet wife and I are currently retired in Lacey, Washington. I happily have plenty of time to create low cost portraits of pets, children, or loved ones for you, too. You might keep it for yourself or give it as a wedding, birthday, anniversary, or Christmas gift for a loved one.
“Go to, then, you who are gifted; cultivate your gift. Develop it in any of the arts and in every worthy example of them. …Employ your talent as an avocation or cultivate it as a hobby. But in all ways bless others with it.”