“My oldest son Bob bought me some water colors, brushes, and papers to take to Florida with me,” said Cole. “I didn’t touch them during my first year down, and it wasn’t until a year later that I actually used them. I was bored to death at the time and my wife Louise finally suggested that I pick them up and start painting. After that, I never stopped.”
Cole, however, does not just paint to alleviate boredom. To Gary, painting is a tremendously therapeutic endeavor.
“I’ve been depressed almost every day since I retired from teaching,” said Gary. “It is only when I am painting in Florida, or working on my garden in Maine, that I begin to feel better. It is hard to explain, but when I paint, I am in the painting. I’m a part of it. It’s like I enter another world.”
“Yet as soon as I stop,” Gary snapped his fingers, “the depression comes back.”
“I have to be busy at all times to overcome the depression,” continued Gary. “When I’m painting, I’m there. I’m happy. Everything is wonderful and I’m content. I only recently discovered this is essentially replacing a psychiatrist or all of the pills that one would need to remedy depression.”
Cole believes that painting has always been an immensely valuable form of human expression. He reinforces this belief with his extensive knowledge of world history.
“Without any question whatsoever, I firmly believe that human beings have produced the things that are most valuable to their culture in their art,” said Cole. “Going back to the Paleolithic period, the things they painted on the walls represented what was the most important in their lives. In their case, it was animals. These animals meant not only beauty and everything else in their life, but they also represented total survival. Their total survival depended on what was on those cave walls.
“Moving forward, Ancient Sumerian, and Phoenician art depicted religious figures and ideas because it was the most important to their culture. It was the most important thing in their lives because it represented what was going to happen after they died. They believed that their life on Earth and the quality of that life was the thing that would enable them to go from this world onto the next one,” he said.
Cole’s teaching career spans several decades. He first taught in Woodland, and eventually moved to Presque Isle. His classrooms were full of historical relics including a bust of Nefertiti, a sculpture of The Thinker, and ornamental vases from the Egyptian period. These relics have found a new home in his house, along with two massive green portable walls covered with several original paintings.
“My wife isn’t too happy about it, but it’s the only place to keep the paintings before the upcoming exhibit at NMCC,” said Gary as he motioned toward the two giant displays taking up most of his living room.
“The NMCC library does not permit people to hang things on their walls, so I plan to take my walls with me. Each folding display area will have 10 or 11 paintings on them. I’ve prepared more than 50 paintings all together. They are matted, framed, and ready to present. There will be 40 of them on display at one time during the month of September. Fourteen of them are originals and the rest of them are prints. This is, I believe, the largest art show anyone in northern Maine has put together. I don’t know of anyone up here that has completed this many paintings and put them all on exhibit at the same time.”
Though Cole has been painting since 2007, he gained an intricate understanding of color combinations in the 1950s and ‘60s while dyeing shoes at his family’s business, Cole’s Shoe Services, in his hometown of Houlton.
“Women would bring in linen and satin shoes and want me to dye them to match their gowns,” explained Cole. “Eventually I got to the point where I could perfectly mix the colors to match their gowns, and that is how I learned about mixing paints.”
Cole’s knack for mixing colors, combined with the unique usage of watercolors, creates an aesthetic that is reminiscent of acrylics or oils.
“Sometimes people will ask me how I managed to paint something that looks so good with watercolors,” said Cole. “The truth is, I look at some of my finished paintings and wonder how I made them. I’ve spent countless hours on what would seem like a minor detail to a casual observer, like a horse’s saddle, or the texture of a woman’s dress.
“I get so lost in the small details that I lose track of everything. It’s hard to put into words, but I completely lose myself while painting.”
Editor’s note: Cole’s art will be featured Friday, Sept. 4 from 5-8 p.m. at NMCC’s E. Perrin Edmunds Library as part of the First Friday Art Walk.
