Hello, Nice to meet you…
Maybe painting is what I was meant to do all along? Overall, my art was always praised and encouraged from peers and adults growing up. I won’t deny there were plenty of nay-sayers who stamped the same phrase “Starving Artist” into my head… as if being an artist was a bad thing? Once I finally understood what the term meant, I often thought bluntly… “This stinks! This is all I really like to do. Why can’t I do this when I grow up?” Let’s rewind…
As a kid I was always drawing and obsessing over trains. Yes, I was drawing A LOT of trains. What five-year-old boy doesn’t like trains? I never liked going to the Doctors office growing up except for the fact that every time I went, I was able to give Dr. Jagger, (yes Like Mick Jagger from the Rolling Stones) a new drawing. He would then add it to his clipboard along with my medical records. But the BEST part was after the check up, he would give me what seemed like a mile-long section of paper that covered the medical bench to use for drawing. Definitely an incentive to come back! Nothing beat lying on the kitchen floor later that day and drawing whatever I could imagine on that sheet of paper.
My first experience of Notre Dame football came like so many others, with my dad taking me to a Notre Dame home game on a sunny Autumn Saturday afternoon as a kid. This matchup was against Navy. I can remember playing catch around the outside walls of the stadium before going inside. After settling into our seats in the North end zone several rows above the tunnel, I had my popcorn and soda, and the low sun on the Southern sky was nearly blinding me. I had just taken my first sip and put the cup to rest on the wooden bench next to me. The strangest thing happened! The bright sun disappeared. The team had been practicing field goals, and the netting did not do its job… BULLSEYE! Direct hit on the six-year-old red headed kid. THREE POINTS!
In school, my favorite class was ALWAYS art class OR a class where that day required a touch of art for a project where I felt like I could surely stand out amongst my fellow student peers. My art teachers throughout my career as a student were all supportive and encouraging towards my art, which only made me want to be better. I keep in contact with a couple of my favorites to this day, Mrs. Hullinger from LaSalle Academy middle school, and Mr. Love from Clay High School.
Mrs. Hullinger was full of puns and had a great way of keeping us focused as middle school students, while being an artist herself, she dealt in many mediums including the art of subtle bribery. Or as she would call it “conditioned response and behavior modification”. The best-behaved class received donuts at the end of each semester. This may or may not have helped keep me honing my “craft” from the youthful age of 11-14 rather than goofing off with peers. I do recall being grouped with the lucky recipients of such donut parties on multiple occasions.
Mr. Love is the one who encouraged me to submit my artwork into a juried competition, the Scholastic Art Competition. It received an “Honorable Mention”. The other art students who had received Gold Keys, Silver Keys were blissfully oozing with excitement. This “Honorable Mention” felt like a gut punch to me. Mr. Love then insisted I enter that same painting into another upcoming juried competition… The Congressional Art Competition. After holding my breath for weeks… It won. At the ripe age of seventeen I felt that I had conquered the art world. The painting was then put on display in Washington D.C. for a year in the Capitol Building under the representation of then congresswoman Jackie Walorski. The painting mentioned was a 16x20 canvas, done in acrylic paint. A newfound medium to me. The painting was of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library - Touchdown Jesus. Thus, planting the seed…
Around the same time in high school, I began to take notice of the walls in my relatives’ homes. No not the actual walls, but what hung on them. Paintings that I’d been around all my life, but never took notice of. These were the works of Edward Basker, my grandfather’s oldest brother, making him my great uncle. Edward Basker was a renowned award-winning South Bend watercolor artist who also taught at the University of Notre Dame throughout the 1960s. I instantly became obsessed with his art and began collecting and surrounding myself with his paintings of barns, churches, and yes NOTRE DAME. I found them for sale online, locally, or at antique stores. His style and structure of artwork which seems so effortless and precise, helped influence my own work by simply surrounding myself with it.
Since 2019, my art has revolved majorly around Notre Dame. I have been fortunate to have grown up in the shadow of the Golden Dome and still live just minutes from campus. I am incredibly lucky to be so close to the University that inspires my artwork. Another blessing is the many who love and support my work. I want to thank all those people who have encouraged me in so many ways… all keeping me doing what I was meant to do all along.
