By Nancye Tuttle, Sun Staff
Lowell Sun
Steppin' Out
page 2
The female figure fascinates Lowell painter John Greenwald -- and has ever since he went to his first life drawing class while studying at New York's High School of Art and Design.
"A friend took me to a life drawing class and there was this naked lady," Greenwald recalls. "I stared for a few minutes then I started drawing. And ever since then, that's what I've wanted to do."
That was over 40 years ago. In the interim, he had a successful journalism career, with a stop at The Sun. But finally, a few years ago, after recovering from a bout of meningitis that left him in a coma for several weeks, he got his wish.
Greenwald now works out of a Western Avenue studio in Lowell, creating colorful nudes in an expressionist manner. His work is featured in the solo show Multiple Exposures, opening Saturday and running through July 15 at Prescott Street Gallery in Lowell.
"I paint the nude figure in an unplanned, expressionist manner, using watercolors, colored inks and other mixed media on paper. I work quickly and intuitively. My goals are to convey and explore personality and emotion of the models. I look for a sense of spirit and personality in them and try to create paintings that engage the eye," said Greenwald, who plays driving rock 'n' roll as he works.
"I do the drawing, then lay in the color and don't think about it," he said.
Making the drawings is easy, laying them out into agreeable arrangements is where it gets difficult.
"My challenge is to make it flow," he said.
Recently, he's started working with gesture drawings -- quick sketches artists do to warm up. These make up the bulk of his new show.
He is also working in panoramic accordion-fold books, hoping to create a impulsive sense of movement and experimentation. And he is also trying out collage, combining his cut up drawings with images from magazines.
"In all my work, I aim to let whatever occurs between my eyes and my hand happen as freely and intuitively as possible. I hope the viewer responds with equal spontaneity," he said.
An opening reception is Saturday from noon-4 p.m. at the gallery, 58 Prescott Street. The gallery is open Thursday, 4-8 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, noon-6 p.m.. and Sunday, noon-4 p.m. Call 978-764-2556.
Nancye Tuttle's e-mail address is ntuttle@lowellsun.com
*****
The Middlesex Beat
June 2006
JOHN GREENWALD:
Lowell's Master of Nudes
By Steven P. Galante
The first time he saw a naked woman, John Greenwald froze. "I was 15 or 16 at the time, and going to high school in New York," he says. "I paid 45 cents to sign up for a life drawing class at the Art Students League. The model came out, and I couldn't move. I had never seen a woman without her clothes on. Then I noticed everybody else was drawing. So I started drawing. And I fell in love with it."
Nearly 50 years later, Greenwald is still drawing nudes-much more spontaneously now-and remains surrounded by artists. Indeed, within Lowell's burgeoning art scene, Greenwald is a fixture. "He's ubiquitous," says Steve Syverson, a sculptor and owner of Van Gogh's Gear, a Lowell art supply story. "He goes to all the openings. He's always supporting people."
This month, Greenwald has an opening of his own, a one-person show titled Multiple Exposures at the Prescott Street Gallery, Lowell's newest exhibit venue. Typically, Greenwald creates his radiantly colored nudes in acrylics and other water-based paints in formats no bigger than 18 by 24 inches. For this show, however, Greenwald assembled multiple small drawings to compose larger works.
"Knocking out these gesture drawings is easy," he says. "Picking four or five pieces from the hundreds I've created, and organizing them into a single grid-that's the hard part."
As head of the Lowell Cultural Roundtable for the past seven years, Greenwald has become the point-man for news about the Lowell art scene. Bits of information pour in daily by e-mail. Every few days, he compiles the information into a summary, which he forwards to the roundtable's
140-odd members.
When the occasional crisis arises, Greenwald calls the organization to arms. Recently, for example, he helped rally roundtable members to attend a Lowell City Council meeting that was to vote on whether to create a permanent subcommittee to aid the arts. The mobilization brought dozens of roundtable members to the council meeting to support the measure-which passed handily.
A heavy man with a moustache, Greenwald stands just under six feet tall. He walks with the aid of a multicolored cane, a necessity stemming from the spinal meningitis that seven years ago put him in a month-long coma and nearly killed him. Resulting kidney damage requires Greenwald to undergo four hours of dialysis three days a week-a task he dismissively refers to as his "part-time job."
His New York mannerisms have proven as tough to kill as Greenwald himself. More than 40 years after leaving his native city, his Big Apple accent still jars the ear. And his hands leap into eloquent gymnastics each time he opens his mouth, as though words alone can hardly suffice.
A large model stand dominates the center of Greenwald's sizeable atelier on the top floor of the Weston Avenue Studios. Light from one far window fills the room. He sketches rapidly when his model is posing,
sometimes challenging himself to finish a pencil sketch in two minutes or less.
"I prefer models who are articulate," Greenwald says, "because we can have conversations. If I'm talking, I'm not concentrating on what I'm drawing. That allows my subconscious to come through, and the 'mistakes' to happen. And 'mistakes' are what make the work interesting."
Later, when he fills the sketches with color, Greenwald has "very hard, very fast, violent rock music" playing in the background. "Lately," he says, "I've been listening to a band called 'Rancid'"-a name that, he says, perfectly sums up their style of music.
"I love making art," he says. "The real challenge for me is reaching inside myself and pulling out the emotions, and making them in some way representative on the page."
He contrasts the emotional freedom of his art with the factual discipline of journalism, which was his profession until illness slowed him down. Today, he writes a weekly column on film, TV and culture for a Connecticut newspaper, and an occasional column on the arts for The Lowell Sun.
Greenwald doesn't aggrandize his work. "In reality, I make naked ladies," he says. "As much as people want to rationalize it-'Oh, it's beautiful treatment of line and color'-it's really a person with no clothes on. And that creates an emotional response. A naked person is different from a naked dog, or even a naked baby. And that's fine. "I find within the human figure everything I need," he says. "I paint what pleases me. And I hope there are people who want to look over my shoulder."
John Greenwald's one-man show, Multiple Exposures, runs through July 14 at The Prescott Street Gallery, 58 Prescott Street, Lowell, which is open 10am to 5pm every Friday.