Another Discovery

Out of the blue, I have been contacted by another collector of my father's paintings, someone I do not know, who sent me this delightful image.  She did not tell me how or when she acquired the painting, but it does have a label on the back from the Boris Mirsky Gallery, once a prominent Boston venue.  She and I speculate that this is a Cape Ann scene, and if anyone recognizes it more specifically, let me know!

A Discovery

An old family friend who I had not heard from in a long time recently sent me this photo.  He's been living with the painting for most of his life.  Mayo gave (sold?) it to his parents, probably in the late 1940's/early 1950's.  It brought to mind other watercolors from that period.

Gloucester Harbor in 1952

A Photo of Gloucester Harbor in 1952

This old picture turned up in a box of memorabilia that my mom had been saving.  I don't know who took it, or why an edge has been cut off, but there is a date on the reverse: 1952.  Wow.  I was two years old then.  Mayo did not work from photographs - in my memory he always gone in the summer mornings, off to "paint the boats."  Perhaps he used this image as a sort of compositional guide or detail guide.  Who knows?

For me this image evokes a constellation sounds, smells and visual memories.  Gorton's Fish factory was near where this was taken, so the smell of fish was always strongly in the air.  As a young child, about the only times I was taken to Gloucester were on shopping and errand expeditions.  We were often there around mid-day, when the noon whistle at the factory sounded.  Do you remember how loud that was?

Pigeon Cove, Circa 1953

My parents rented a little house in Pigeon Cove, on Cape Ann in Massachusetts, for a summer or two.
From the old photos I have of myself and my brother playing in the yard, with boats at anchor behind us, I'd guess it was the summers of 1952 and 1953.  Dad must have loved walking out the door to find these wonderful scenes of granite seawalls, fishing boats and dinghies.

Dad was well known in the region for his bold watercolors that recorded yet abstracted the waterfront scenes of Cape Ann.   At the time, not many New England painters had adapted the lessons of Cubism, of John Marin and Andrew Dasburg, but Dad was always pushing forward into new styles and concepts.  This particular painting was done quickly, almost like a sketch, but fully captures the brilliant light and maritime character of the Cape.

Gloucester Harbor in the '50's

Dad was known for his watercolors of Gloucester Harbor.  I remember family summers in Rockport when Dad would drive off every morning with his paints and tools, returning at lunchtime with a new painting. It was always done at one sitting and emerged from the easel as fresh as a summer's day.  This one has just been donated to the Health Sciences Center at the University of New Mexico.

EDGE OF THE SEA #2

                                                            acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40"
     
Our family is pleased to announce the donation of Dad's painting, Edge of the Sea #2 to Laboure' College in Milton, Massachusetts.  This donation, like several others before it, was facilitated by the wonderful agency, The Art Connection, which provides Boston area non-profit agencies with a storehouse of art to choose from.  Thank-you to everyone who made it possible for this painting to hang in a public setting and be enjoyed as it was meant to be.  A letter from Laboure' Colleges says this work "will help with bringing inspiration and life to our students on a daily basis."

Paintings to the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center

Far Horizon - acrylic on canvas - 36 x46"

One of the paintings we placed in good homes last year was this acrylic, probably from the 1980's.  It's one of the few purely abstract works to survive Dad's habit of painting over older canvases, which he did partly to save buying new canvas and partly because the already existing  colors and shapes gave impetus to his new vision.

Several of Dad's paintings have gone to UNM over the years.  Our family is proud to have them permanently displayed in the several buildings that make up the Health Sciences Center.  We feel that Dad would have been happy to have them on public view, enjoyed by so many faculty members, students, staff and patients.   Lots of credit should go to Chris Fenton, the curator of UNM's program, who does a wonderful job of placing the art where it can best be appreciated.

Modernism in Taos

Taos #5 - 1948

Recently re-reading David L. Witt's book, Modernists in Taos: From Dasburg to Martin, I was struck by the impact Dad's 1948 summer in Taos had on his subsequent work, and probably also his teaching and writing.  In Taos to attend Louis Ribak's Taos Valley Art School, Dad would have had contact with some of the most forward-looking artists of his day and seen their work first-hand.  Among these artists were Ribak and his wife, Beatrice Mandelman, Andrew Dasburg, John Marin, Tom Benrimo and many more, who made this tiny New Mexico town a vital center for the development of Modern art.  I believe Dad stayed in contact with Benrimo, and certainly with Louis and Bea Mandelman, who later lived part-time in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, as did my parents.

Dad must have felt that in Taos he was at the forefront of current painting practice.  Already familiar with John Marin's watercolors and an accomplished watercolorist himself, Dad's loose handling of the medium, and often his breaking up of pictorial space, must have received additional impetus that summer.

These two aspects of his painting, the looseness of paint handling and the Cezannesque/Dasburg/Marin
breaking up of the picture plane, remained constant threads throughout Dad's career.  He taught them to his students in Stamford, and also students of his widely-used high school textbook, Brush and Palette.

Provincetown Art Association and Museum Donation

We recently donated this painting, Day into Night, to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, also know as PAAM.   The painting is probably from the 1980's and used to hang to the left of the fireplace in Mom and Dad's living room in Harwich.  As Dad had been a long-time member of PAAM and participated in several of their annual artist-member exhibits, I know he would be proud to be represented in this collection.  The collection includes work by William Zorach, Wolf Kahn, Franz Kline, John Singer Sargent, William Merrit Chase and other luminaries of American art.

Sunset on Cape Cod Bay

This rosy painting has no name, so I have given it one, Sunset on Cape Cod Bay.  It's 38 x 48."  Dad usually titled his paintings on the canvas where it wraps around the stretcher, but I couldn't find anything on this beauty except a label from an exhibition at the Rockport Art Association, unfortunately not dated.   Even with its predominant rosy reds, this painting has a stillness that evokes the end of the day.

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.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Welcome to this blog/website I am  creating for my dad, Mayo Sorgman.  When he died in 2006, my brother and I inherited a large number of paintings and a legacy of creativity.  I'd like to share some of the paintings, and establish a web presence for Dad.  His work is too beautiful and important (to me, at least) to fade into obscurity.  

The painting pictured here, a 30 x 40" acrylic, dates from one of Dad's most productive periods, and since he was painting well into his 80's, there were several distinct periods.  Dad never dated his work, but I know that this one was completed after he and Mom moved to Harwich, on Cape Cod, in 1997.   At this time Dad produced abstracted Cape landscapes that poetically convey the shimmering maritime light.  I've got numbers of these beauties rolled up in storage.  They have never been shown.  It is my delight to begin to post these works in hopes of sharing them with you.