Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
'The Puddle Jumpers,' on the front lawn at the Grandview Ranch where David Hunt lives, was the inspiration for 'Joy,' his oil painting on exhibit at the Triton Museum.
Painting Practice
No bones about it, retired orthopedic surgeon has a new career in the arts
By Shari Kaplan
As a surgeon, Saratogan David Hunt never lacked for patients. As a painter, he never lacks for patience, or topics either. Although these professions may at first seem too disparate to be part of the same person's modus operandi, they have combined well for Hunt. He attributes his love for and success in each to something they both have in common--the sense of inspiration each engenders in him. It took many years for Hunt to develop and hone these abilities.
Hunt had his beginnings in Nashville, Tenn.; his voice still offers a hint of that warm, Southern inflection when he speaks certain words. While aspiring country musicians flocked to Hunt's hometown, as actors do to Hollywood, in hopes of making it big, Hunt realized his own road to success led away from Nashville. He grew up with a love of drawing, painting and calligraphy, entered a Tennessee Sesquicentennial art competition and tried his hand at sculpting clay, but he did not think of the creative arts as a profession.
"I always had a strong interest in animals. I raised and showed collie dogs and I remember my first thought was to become a veterinarian," he recalls. "But then I thought maybe I'd better become a physician."
Two facts moved him from animals to humans, he says: animals can't explain to a doctor what's wrong with them, and in the South at the time, colleges offering veterinary degrees were few and far between. Also, the veterinary schools Hunt could have attended specialized in large animals rather than house pets. He just couldn't see himself treating horses, cows and their like for a living.
He attended Tennessee Polytechnic and the University of Tennessee, Memphis, then moved to the Bay Area in 1958 and enrolled at Stanford Medical School. After a year's fellowship in children's orthopedics at the University of Iowa, he served as chief resident at San Jose's Valley Medical Center. Then, with degree in hand, he opened his own orthopedic surgery practice in the San Jose/Los Gatos area, and was affiliated with Good Samaritan (now Columbia Good Samaritan) Hospital.
Hunt recently retired after 33 years in the field. He has been a Saratogan for almost as many years, making his home on a sprawling, sylvan estate in the quiet Saratoga hills known as the Old Grandview Ranch.
"I liked orthopedics because you have a very broad practice--you treat children, as well as adults, perform surgeries and help people in various ways. Due to the nature of my practice, I got to treat several generations of the same family," he says. From correcting congenital defects, such as a toddler's club foot, or treating the traumatic injuries requiring an elderly woman's hip replacement, Hunt's work spanned it all.
"What was really wonderful was how I got to know and help my patients. That's what I miss most," he adds. "I always had such an admiration for how patients can meet all the challenges of illness, injury and surgery."
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
As an artist, Hunt finds Oscar a valuable office addition.
Hunt met the challenges of performing delicate surgery in a way that hinted at the creative tendencies surfacing in his life, even before he began the artistic study and practice to which he devotes himself today.
While in the midst of operating on a patient, Hunt says, he often found himself in a distinctive, highly sensitive "mode" that differed from ordinary thought. Now that he is retired and painting frequently, both in his own sunny studio and with the Saratoga Community of Painters, he describes his absorption with the creative process in a similar way.
"The mind will shift into a state which almost seems timeless. When you finish something important, you often find yourself saying, 'How did that happen?' You have to be very sensitive and alert to assure that things happen the way you plan them," he explains. "You can't call it; somehow it comes to you when your mind is in the right condition."
His years in medicine also prepared him in another way for his blossoming as an artist, and that is his appreciation for and familiarity with the human body. Accurately portraying the body in portraiture is among the most challenging skills for many artists to develop, Hunt says, but for him it came naturally.
"Knowing the skeleton is a great help in art as well as in orthopedics. When you look at a body, knowing what's going on with the muscles and bones underneath is helpful in drawing it," he says, wiggling one of the bones of "Oscar," the anatomical skeleton that once hung in his office and now shares a corner of his studio.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
David Hunt enjoys painting in his bright and airy home studio at Grandview Ranch.
About a decade ago, while still a busy orthopedic surgeon, Hunt could no longer ignore his artistic inclination and concurrently began to pursue painting seriously. He amplified his talents by studying with South Bay professional watercolorists Oneida Hammond and Charles Muench and oil painter David A. Leffel of New Mexico.
"I never had any formal [college] training as such because my main interest was in the sciences. Other than doing scientific drawings, it was mainly a dormant thing until about 10 years ago," Hunt recalls.
About five years ago, Hunt joined the Saratoga Community of Painters. Headed by Saratogan Judy Puthuff, the SCP consists of about 20 artists, mostly from Saratoga and Los Gatos, who meet Wednesday mornings and engage mainly in the plein-air style of watercolor painting. The artists paint outdoors, using available light, atmosphere and surroundings. "I like watercolor because it's a spontaneous medium. Its strengths are its spontaneity and the convenience of doing it on-site," Hunt says.
Some SCP members are professional artists, but many are not. All of them benefit from their weekly painting experiences, as well as from the critiques the group setting offers. The group assembled a large exhibit in the fall of 1998 in the Gallery at Villa Montalvo. They also show in other local venues, including Marjolaine French Pastries bakery on Big Basin Way.
"One of the unique things about our group is how we work together. I've been impressed with David's dedication over the years. Sometimes it was hard for him to meet with the group regularly when his practice was so busy, but he always meets all of his obligations and he does it with grace," says Puthuff, who recalls when Hunt somehow squeezed time out of a busy day at the office just to be present at a local hanging of the SCP's works.
"He's never seemed harried or pressured and when he's with us he is very focused. He has a real thoroughness and dedication to his art. His presence is hard to describe; it's just such an air of confidence and grace. He brings a good balance to the group," Puthuff adds.
Photograph courtesy of David Hunt
David Hunt enjoys painting on location with the Saratoga Community of Painters.
Along with Villa Montalvo, which Hunt says is one of his favorite spots to sit down with his watercolors, he also enjoys painting at Hakone Gardens in Saratoga and Vasona Lake County Park in Los Gatos.
There also is the Old Grandview Ranch with its 25 acres of an old orchard and several hundred producing apricot trees. The ranch boasts other areas of assorted fruit trees, including apples, oranges, lemons, peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries, quinces, figs, persimmons and pecans. Fifty sculptures ranging from neo-classical statues to geometric modern art, fountains, ponds, tall groves of evergreen and deciduous trees, a camellia garden, a swimming pool and lots of pretty lawns, pathways and flowers adorn the ranch.
This artist's springtime dream is, in fact, the destination for the SCP's March 8 painting session. This will be only the second time the group has visited the property.
The SCP isn't the only group to favor the locale. The American Cancer Society's Grandview League (named after the historic estate) has had several fundraisers there. The San Jose State University Choraliers sang holiday programs there; and the late pianist Marina Gusak-Grin, wife of San Jose Symphony conductor Leonid Grin, also used it for a benefit performance.
Photograph courtesy of David Hunt
The orchard on the property where he lives provides lots of inspiration to artist David Hunt, who painted this field awash with mustard blossoms.
The San Jose Symphony has another tie to the ranch, in the form of Hunt's participation in a facet of its Beethoven Festival 2000. The festival is the brainchild of Leonid Grin to showcase the breadth of Ludwig von Beethoven's musical genius. It features solo piano pieces, chamber music, concertos and symphonies. The performances take place at various South Bay venues, including the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, the San Jose State University Concert Hall and Cupertino's Flint Center.
The Triton Museum of Art, at 1505 Warburton Ave. in Santa Clara, also is part of the festival with its exhibition titled Unplugged and Unstretched: A Celebration of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. The show, which runs through March 26, features individual interpretations of that symphony by more than a dozen Bay Area artists, including Hunt.
Hunt's contribution is a large oil painting entitled Joy, the emotion he says Beethoven's Ninth inspires in him. In putting paint to canvas, Hunt turned to one of his favorite garden sculptures, The Puddle Jumpers, added some embellishments and artistic extras and entered it for the Triton's show. The painting offers "a sense of surging energy and a concept of vaulted space and natural grandeur," he says.
Crafted by New Mexican sculptor Glenna Goodacre, The Puddle Jumpers is a fanciful portrayal of children stomping gleefully through the rain as though hovering just above the wet grass. It's a particularly joyful spectacle amid this winter's constant rains.
Hunt is no stranger to joy himself. Becoming retired has given Hunt an abundance of time for his artistic pursuits--time he says he will definitely take advantage of.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
