Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Jerry McLaughlin's New York show features real and imagined life forms in bright colors and infinite detail.

Artist follows his muse in spite of hardships

By Dale Bryant

When Jerry McLaughlin says nature is what inspires his art, he doesn't exactly mean he likes to paint trees. He means he likes to paint what makes a tree a tree. He considers insects "extraordinarily beautiful," and says of flowers, those most romantic of natural wonders, "Flowers are just sex things."

At his current show in New York's Allan Stone Gallery, McLaughlin's huge oil paintings reveal real and imagined life forms, mechanical and organic, symmetrical, yet a little out of whack, in explosions of bright colors and incredible detail.

McLaughlin is interested in far-off places--and by that, he doesn't mean on the other side of the world; he means farther along the evolutionary scale. As a child, he read science fiction, but then he discovered that real science was even more fun. "The first time I learned about neutron stars, I got such a rush," the 72-year-old McLaughlin recalls. Science--particularly astronomy, oceanography and quantum physics--has influenced his art ever since.

"The more we know about something," he says, "the deeper the beauty." Not one for easy answers, McLaughlin is drawn to the mysteries of the universe. "Quantum mechanics makes me feel there's a deep mystery. The universe is interconnected, but also indifferent."

A nationally recognized artist whose works hang in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum and the Whitney Museum in New York City, McLaughlin has found his way to Los Gatos. And he says he'd like to make a life here.

That's partly because his daughter, Joanne Swing, lives here, but it's not just that. "I like the feel of the place," he says. "Los Gatans have good manners and an inclination to be pleasant. I like that."

Already, he's beginning to establish a following. Ruth Geredes, the local artist who owns Los Gatos Art Supplies where McLaughlin shops, says she had a hard time visualizing his work when he tried to describe it to her.

So he brought in color copies. "I was flabbergasted," she recalls. "The work is hard to describe; it has a surreal quality. I was very impressed." She was impressed, too, that his work was being shown at the Allan Stone Gallery. "I know that gallery by reputation," she says.

She also recalls that 14-year-old Los Gatos High School student Kevin Walton, who works part time in the store and studies art in school, was "blown away" when he saw the copies.

Kevin even suggested framing the copies and selling them. He and McLaughlin just might work out a deal. Kevin says it's hard for him to believe that someone McLaughlin's age could do work that would speak so strongly to a 14-year-old. "It's bizarre for an older guy to do this really cool stuff," he says.

McLaughlin has found temporary quarters in a cottage--with detached bathroom--in the Santa Cruz Mountains near his daughter's home. "It's on a 60-degree slope, and I have to walk outside about a hundred feet just to go to the john," he says. Still, he acknowledges that the owner is doing a good deed by letting him stay in what is affectionately known as the "back Hilton."

Considering some of his previous living conditions, one gets the impression McLaughlin might eventually make do with the inconveniences of his current abode--if only there were enough room for him to paint.

Although his work is recognized and admired, it hasn't made him a wealthy man. Quite the contrary. He has sold only four paintings at five one-man shows in New York over the past 20 years. "My interest in science has made me paint pictures that are discomforting for most people," he says. One doesn't think of a cozy spot over the fireplace mantel or the sofa when one looks at McLaughlin's huge futuristic paintings.

Still, he paints--not what he knows will sell, but what moves him. "I just paint," he says. "I don't think about money," he adds, calling himself "one of the most impractical people in the world."

McLaughlin's passion has meant he's had to learn to live without money. "I've always had to scramble; I've especially had to use my wits to find a place to live."

For the past 12 years, he's found places where he could pay minimal rent and provide a service to the owner. Until his recent move to Los Gatos, he lived in the Aptos home of an elderly woman for whom he served as a caregiver. A fall at the age of 95 landed her in a nursing home and rendered the artist homeless.

He once lived in a trailer on a llama ranch. The owner offered a room where McLaughlin could paint; the artist was available to care for the animals when an emergency took the owner out of town.

Amazingly, McLaughlin says that about 95 percent of what he tries as an artist disappoints him. So why does he endure so much to do the work that, to put it mildly, has left him financially insecure?

"It's worth it for how the other 5 percent makes me feel," he says.

In spite of the hardships he's endured for art, McLaughlin says, "It's really good luck to be a painter."

He calls art "one of the few things in our lives that give a sublime feeling. It's one of the lovely deep pleasures we can have in our lives." Like love, McLaughlin says, art is mysterious. "And it's a heck of a lot of fun to do."

It's not that McLaughlin doesn't know how to make money with his art. He spent nearly 20 years as an art director at Ogilvie and Manthy in New York City. Over the past 25 years, he's earned money as an illustrator for such publications as Gourmet, Connoisseur and Psychology Today. He illustrated Mary Ann Cook's essay on heroes in the Opinion section of today's Los Gatos Weekly-Times.

While he looks for a living arrangement that will provide him a roof over his head and a place to paint, he is workng on re-establishing his contacts for his illustration work, with his daughter serving as his rep. "She mails out my work and keeps track of it for me," he says.

But he isn't planning to get too pragmatic. "I'm working on sketches for my next big canvases," he says. "I love huge canvases. What I want to do is bring together synthesized objects."

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