FASST: Fine Arts Society of the Southern Tier

George Lohmann has been drawing and painting as far back as he can remember. He was encouraged by his father who also paints and draws (last month’s featured artist). Because he was taking so many academic courses in high school, it was not until his senior year that he began to take art classes. In college at SUNY Fredonia, he continued studying art but later changed his major and received a BS in Secondary Education in English, taking a position teaching English at Newark Valley in 1972. He later completed his MA in literature at SUNY Cortland.

Throughout the seventies, he concentrated on pastels and acrylics. However, when two daughters entered the scene, there was not time to haul out all the art supplies, so he started picking up a pen or a brush and dipping it into the ink well. From that time on, pen and ink or brush and ink became his preferred medium and pointillism a favorite technique.

In the nineties, he had the opportunity to express his artistic talents designing sets, sixteen in all, for the musicals he was directing each year at Newark Valley High School until 2006, when he retired from teaching.

He and his wife, Nancy, began designing and producing their own handmade Christmas cards the first Christmas after they married, a tradition that they have continued for forty-five Christmases. Over the years they have experimented with a variety of media: block prints, scherenschnitte, brush and ink, pen and ink, and embossing, to name a few. For probably the past ten years, since their list of recipients had grown prohibitive, George does a pen and ink drawing, Nancy usually writes the verse, and they make copies.

George has lived in Berkshire for the past 40 years, and most recently has gotten back to trying his hand at acrylics. He just bought new pastels, which he is anxious to get back to using again.