Before the Storm

With the assistance of The Art Connection in Boston, "Before the Storm" has just been donated to Whidden Hospital.   Whidden serves the communities of Everett, Chelsea, Revere, Winthrop and Malden, MA.    We, the family, are please to have Dad's work going to public collections where it can be appreciated by many for years to come.

This is an acrylic on canvas in Dad's favorite size, 30 x 40."

August brings memories of Rockport and Gloucester, where my earliest summers were spent, with Dad off every morning to the fishing harbor and back every afternoon with a new painting. In this one you can practically hear the foghorn. There are gulls crying, too, and the gentle lap of waves against the boats. I believe that's "Motif #1" in the background, which places this scene in Rockport harbor.

Lost Painting

On February 4th a water pipe froze and burst in the studio, where Dad's watercolors are stored along with my paintings. The photo above shows two waterlogged and frozen rugs we tossed out to dry in the sun - and then it snowed again. One of Dad's watercolors, dating from World War II, was lost, so this image is a kind of memorial. We were lucky that it was only one painting, plus a beautiful print by my California friend, Dorothy Churchill-Johnson, and a number of (replaceable) picture mats that were damaged. The studio itself had had to be dried out, the walls punctured to release dampness, the sink cabinet below the burst pipe replaced, the walls rebuilt, etc. In all, an upsetting but not catastrophic event, well covered by insurance. Dad's painting of Missouri barns and fields, though, is gone for good.

Taos Trees

Imagine having the energy to paint like this in one's eighties! It's a large painting, 33.5 x 47.5", done after a trip to Taos early one October in the 1990's. Dad was obviously thrilled by the colorful, expansive vistas we drove through, and kept a clear memory to paint from. He records the extremes of color and value that occur in high mountain light, and sets up a contrast between the close, dark forest and a distant mountaintop.

Dad had also been looking at Wolf Kahn's paintings at this time. You can see him trying out Khan's simplified compositional sense, and succeeding. The desire to try something new remained a hallmark of the Sorgman career right up to the end.

Watercolors

When I was a child, we spent the glorious months of summer in Rockport, on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. In the mornings, Dad would disappear from whatever tiny rental we had that year, and return with a new watercolor of Gloucester - the fishing boats, the harbor, or maybe the surf crashing on Bass Rocks. Then we would all have lunch and go to the beach.

Dad belonged to the Rockport Art Association, so we often stopped in to their gallery on some business, or to attend an opening. I believe Dad was one of the more forward-thinking, or "modern" of the group. His bold use of watercolor stood out among the careful "realism" of most of the painters.

Here is a harbor scene. This painting hangs in Mom's apartment to remind us of those sunny summers in the '50's.

Abstracting the Landscape

In this large landscape, one of my favorites, Dad succeeded in painting a marvelous tapestry of abstract color that also evokes the sand dunes of Cape Cod. Most wonderful is the turquoise high on the left that is obviously painted over/after what lies beneath it, and yet stands for a distant inlet of water. To the viewer, it is seemingly both close and far away, both floating above the picture plain and also obviously a flat stroke of paint.

One of Dad's practices was to turn a painting over, and even on its side, to test the validity of the composition from all directions. It had to "work," as he put it. In my mind's eye, I can see him turning this painting and finding it good.

A Donation of Paintings

Recently, we donated several of Dad's paintings to the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Foundation.  They have an excellent collection, mostly of New Mexico artists, spread through the various hospital, classroom, and out-patient buildings.  Garo Andreasian, Joe Novak, Tony Evanko, and myself are some of the artists, but there are many more.

Dad did, in fact, paint in New Mexico during the summer of 1948, when he studied with Louis Ribak (on the G.I. Bill).  This was the summer after Mom and Dad married, so their months in Taos were like a honeymoon.  They met many people in the Taos art community and began a long friendship with Louis and his wife, Beatrice Mandelman.  That summer, Dad painted many watercolors, which survived in a portfolio, and some of them have been given to the UNM collection also.   Another is displayed in the New Mexico Capitol Collection; you can see it if you visit that great collection in the Roundhouse.

Here, I've published an acrylic abstract titled "Of Sea and Weather" probably dating from the 1970's or 80's.  The weather Dad had in mind seems to be calm and overcast, possibly foggy.  I love the grave serenity of this painting.