I had no idea who Ken Potter was when I first met the man. I did not know that he was an internationally renowned artist who had painted landscapes and cityscapes on location around the world. I did not know that he was an important proponent of the California Style of Watercolor Painting, an art movement known for bold expressive brushwork and bright transparent color which features prominently in the history of California landscape painting. I did not know that Ken was a Marine who saw intense combat during WWII. Many things I now know about Ken Potter, I only learned after the fact, either from reading the McClelland’s book, or from talking with people who knew him.
But I knew none of this when I first met the man, I was just an ignorant kid taking art classes at Sacramento City College. Ken’s mother and my grandmother attended church together, and through this connection I was introduced to Ken. At first, I thought he was just another guy who was interest in art, but then I saw the gallery brochure below. The list of accomplishments was impressive even then (1990), but it still doesn’t begin to tell the real story.
When we first met, Ken asked me if I would be interested in attending his upcoming watercolor workshop. I was, but had no transportation. Ken suggested we might split the cost of a motel room, and he could drive me to and from the workshop, if I was willing to tag along to help him carry stuff around as well as scout locations (i.e. find good subjects for landscapes/cityscapes). We sealed the deal with a handshake, and so began four days that changed my life.
Each day of the workshop more or less followed this pattern: Ken and I would get up before sunrise, grab a quick breakfast at a local diner, and then on to the location where we set up our easels and began to paint well before any of the workshop participants arrived. Throughout each day, Ken demoed, lectured, and walked around to spend time with each student. The workshop was only supposed to last so many hours each day, and by late afternoon, the workshop participants had packed up and returned home, but not Ken and I. We remained on location, painting until the last rays of sunlight. After a meal at a local diner, Ken and I returned to the motel, where Ken pulled out the lower drawer of the dresser on his side of the room, and set his watercolor board on the drawer, turning the dresser into a makeshift easel, on which he continued to work on his painting from earlier that day. Following his example, I set up on my side of the room, and we painted until well after midnight (and this is after having painted sunrise to sundown).
We took occasional breaks from painting only to converse about art. I had many questions, and his answers encompassed a life experience that was shockingly broad and deep (and he was not boasting about any of this, everything he said was in response to my prying questions). He described living in England, France, Italy, painting on location in cities around the world, selling his paintings to provide daily bread, being a student of Jean Metzinger and Fernand Léger, interacting with some of the foremost figures of the Modern Art scene, being an art director for ad agencies in New York and San Francisco, watching bullfights in Spain, operating anti-aircraft gunnery against kamikaze planes in World War II, hitchhiking across the United States... and on and on the conversation went, meandering through Cubism, Divisionism, Abstract Expressionism, Futurism, and passionate debates among artists of the 1950’s. The history I could only read about in books was a history he had lived.
On one of those nights in the motel, Ken took a break from his painting. He stood up and walked over to look at a drawing I was working on in my sketchbook. He offered his critique, pointing out that my drawings were missing the gesture, lacking the spirit of my subjects. He described drawing as an act akin to the matador dodging the charging bull; the artist must be fully in the moment, each mark must have focused intention, like the matador drawing his sword and landing a killing stroke on the bull in one fluid motion. He made the motion of a matador drawing his sword. You have to imagine this man, then in his late 60’s, moving across the motel floor with the grace of a 25 year old matador, slaying his imaginary bull. I was trying to process everything he was saying, and avoid saying something stupid, but all I managed (in a meek hesitant voice) was, “So, uhmmm… you’re saying that I need to push the gesture more…” Ken ceased his swordsmanship, turned around and practically shouted, “THAT IS THE GESTURE! You don’t have to push it, Thomas. That IS the gesture!”
Well… that changed everything. I knew that, if I were going to be an artist, I must go all out, I must fully commit. You cannot be an artist with half-hearted intentions – it’s all or nothing. So, I packed up and ran off to art school. Thus began the caffeine-fueled haze of sleepless nights and ever-looming deadlines that defined much of my life ever since.
In the years that followed, Ken and I kept up a written correspondence. I suppose all who knew him have a Ken Potter story to tell. I will share more of mine, along with some thoughts on the “California Style” or “California School of Watercolor Painting”, in future posts on this blog.
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