Remembering Murray Wentworth
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I have in my home three watercolors by Murray Wentworth, a New England painter of enormous talent. One is a full-sheet watercolor, "Deep Spruce", that once won “Best of Show” at a major exhibition in Massachusetts. Another is a half sheet watercolor, "For Maryse", of some fallen apples lying among brown Autumn leaves. The third is the size of a large greeting card, a mini-original of a lobster pot buoy and its tether. One year we exchanged these small watercolor sketches as Christmas cards. Each work has its own story. I wish I had a houseful of stories. |
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When I was younger, and even more self-centered than I am today, I was often careless with my relationships, and, for reasons that seem trivial now, I didn’t stay in touch with anyone after I left Massachusetts. That’s not to say that anyone noticed, but I regret my lapse nonetheless. Murray died in March 2008. I didn’t learn about it until I came across his obituary on the internet while looking for examples of his recent work. A few years separated us, but we’d gone to the same art |
| school and we both taught there later, after it had become the Art Institute of Boston. Sometime in the fifties, Murray introduced me to his wife Elaine when the three of us worked a couple of evenings together doing catalog paste-ups for a small agency called Salinger Advertising. |
| When it came to painting, Murray had a rare single-mindedness of purpose. He used to fill whole sheets of watercolor paper with little squares of the color mixtures he preferred. There were sheets with analogous schemes, sheets with complimentary schemes, sheets with combinations of colors for seasonal scenes, and, I suspect, even for different times of day. Next to each square of color was a handwritten notation of its formula so he wouldn’t forget how he mixed it. I found it remarkable that someone whose work showed such a grand, and seemingly reckless, spontaneity, would approach the technical aspects of his art with the methodology of an accountant. Maybe that’s how greatness is factored - acts of intense emotion tempered by great rationality. |
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| If I had to use a single word to describe Murray, it would be “intense”. When talking about painting, or when giving a demonstration, he seemed electrically charged, surrounded by a crackling energy field, as if he had his hand on one of those electrostatic generators. A bristly head of hair (it was black then) supported the impression. And he was no less intense at his relaxation. Working up a sweat on the drums was probably a way to release a little voltage. My wife and I once joined Murray and Elaine at Sego’s Café, a place near their home where a Dixieland band was a Tuesday night fixture. It wasn’t long before Murray, as was the custom, was invited to sit in on the drums for a couple of sets, whereupon he quickly lost himself in the rhythms and beat of the music. The place was loud! What little conversation there was, had to be held at the top of your lungs, and at great risk to your vocal cords. Unfortunately, crowd noises, and the crowds that make them, are things I have trouble with, so I never became an habitué of the place. |
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I used to be a smoker at one time – a chain-smoker in fact - and Murray found my addiction amusing. Once, when I ran out of cigarettes, the occasion provided him with one hoot after another. Somewhere I’ve still got the little cartoon he did of me in a panic attack, rooting around in an overflowing ashtray looking for a butt long enough to light. He also did one of me on my hands and knees, with perspiration on my worried brow, scouring a wet gutter for smokable stubs. (It never happened.) He did still another with a huge billow of smoke sitting on my shoulders, obscuring my head, while weak little coughs emanated from inside the cloud. (He might well have seen something like that.) |
| Murray admired the work of one artist in particular, and one day in the mid-seventies, we all drove down to New York’s Metropolitan Museum to attend an Andrew Wyeth show called “Wyeth at Kuerners”. Murray was like a kid in a candy store, moving from one painting to the next, pointing out the things he liked: Wyeth’s sense of pathos, the color passages, the way the paint was applied – all the things that created the Wyeth mystique for him. Without Murray realizing it, his animated and infectious enthusiasm had attracted a small following of strangers that moved along with us listening to his commentary on the paintings. When he became aware of them, it briefly startled him out of his involvement with the paintings – but only briefly. He was soon back into a vocal analysis of Wyeth’s work, and the show’s content provided the subject for many future conversations. |
| Murray and Larry Webster, another fine talent, used to hold what were called the Midcoast Maine Watercolor Workshops. They were held around Tenant’s Harbor and Port Clyde, on a peninsula that is one of the more beautiful parts of New England. We all painted until about three in the afternoon, then assembled at the Grange Hall where Murray and Larry would appraise, and comment on, our day’s efforts. This was usually followed by a couple of drinks, something to eat, a few more drinks, and an evening in good company talking about painting and painters. There was a great sense of camaraderie and warmth. And I never got my fill of it. |
| I am proud to have been able to call Murray Wentworth a friend. |