Rick Kuhn has released his second book featuring his original paintings.

While the first book, Scranton Scenes, collected paintings that showed places special to his parents and other relatives, the second book is very dear to the heart of the Newtown native. It celebrates Newtown, with views familiar and not-so-familiar, during all seasons and multiple eras.

Many works in Newtown Scenes: The Paintings of Rick Kuhn portray the town as it looks today. Some show the town as it looked during the 1990s, and a few show Newtown “as it appeared in the 1960s when I was growing up,” he noted recently.

The acrylic works were done between the summer of 2017 and 2020.

The book’s cover features a view of the Newtown Labor Day Parade, circa mid 1960s, with members of Striders Drum Corps marching the familiar parade route. The Matthew Curtiss House is in the background, with familiar stately private homes on either side of the historical society’s headquarters.

Kuhn was a drummer for several years, during the 1960s, in the now-defunct fife and drum corps.

Inside the book, the first painting shown is almost obligatory, featuring the eastern end of Church Hill Road and the Main Street flagpole. The collection also closes with a view of the famous landmark from its southern side.

Nearly 30 images are within the collection, offering views from all over town. There are additional Main Street views featuring Edmond Town Hall, Newtown General Store, and even the historic “Balcony House” at 34 Main Street.

Additionally, there are views of Hawley Pond, the former Cross Roads Deli, and Sandy Hook Center — including one painting with Hawley Warner’s Red Brick General Store and another showing Sandy Hook Diner. The town’s two ice cream stands are also celebrated, each with their own painting, as is the Glen Road Silver Bridge.

Although he has been away from Newtown, living in the northwestern US for several years, “I still feel a strong attachment to Newtown and still consider it my home,” Kuhn told The Newtown Bee.

Speaking from his home in Twin Falls, Idaho, the self-taught artist said while he has always had a strong attraction to his former hometown, it was not until three years ago that he began painting scenes of it.

For much of his life, he said, his artistic output was through music.

Kuhn grew up on Nearbrook Drive. His parents moved into town in the early 1950s, buying a house just across the road from the Pootatuck River.

Kuhn graduated from Newtown High School in 1970. He stayed in the area for a few years after that, renting an apartment in Danbury before moving away when he was 27.

He and his wife have lived in Idaho for decades. Years ago, they traveled as a USO duo, touring overseas and boosting troop morale around the world. He always had a camera, and usually had painting kits. Continued travels across the country have resulted in an oeuvre filled with scenes from Colorado, Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico, and South Dakota, among many other United States locations.

Kuhn started working in oils in the early ’90s. That was when he and his wife were traveling musicians, gone from home for several months at a time.

“Oil paint takes a long time to dry, though, and it’s messy,” Kuhn said. “The acrylic I’m using now mixes with water, and it dries in five minutes. That, and the brushes can be cleaned with water.”

For those reasons, Kuhn switched to his current medium of choice.

“It wasn’t for an aesthetic reason,” he said. “It was a messy one.”

Photographs help Kuhn put fine detail into his work.

“I take photographs everywhere we go,” he said. “Because of the style I do, with the detail, I take photographs, using them as reference at home, so that I can work on them on my own time.”

Charlene (Danyew) Carson, a childhood friend who wrote an essay for Newtown Scenes, says one of Kuhn’s childhood hobbies has carried into his painting.

“He was very interested in model trains. He built an entire set down in his basement, and it was huge,” she shared. “It was very detailed, and very intricate.

“He’s still a train aficionado — he loves them, and cars — and if you look at his paintings, he has included them in a lot of his work,” she said.

Memories Shared

Most of the images in Newtown Scenes are accompanied by writings from longtime friends. Essays and poetry from current and former residents describe the scenes, or how viewing the paintings recalls their own childhood memories.

Among those who shared memories for the book are siblings Leslie and Corky Ballard. Both are members of Panacea, the band that formed during the late 1960s and early ‘7’70s when the Ballards and Kuhn, along with Jon Dodson and Bruce Tibbits, were all Newtown High School students.

Alongside a painting of Land’s End schoolhouse, Leslie Ballard wrote that the circa 1748 building in Hawleyville served in the 1970s as headquarters for Teen Action Newtown. The group, she said, “was a bridge between generations, with teenage officers and adult advisors.”

She credits the immersion in the arts when they were young as instilling “music as a way of life, and also gave us lifelong friendships,” she noted.

Her brother’s notes with the same painting recall the first time the two men met, and the awe Corky felt watching Kuhn perform on guitar, bass, and accordion.

“When first I saw Rick’s paintings, I was amazed that he could still amaze me,” Ballard shared.

Leslie Ballard also shared memories on another painting.

“Hawleyville Scene” depicts the former wooden building at 26 Hawleyville Road, home of multiple incarnations of delicatessens and at least one dry cleaner/tailor during its final years before demolition in 2016. Today the property hosts the brand-new Mitchell Hawleyville Deli and Sunoco station.

Ballard calls the painting — which includes the railroad tracks and rail crossing sign, and two very vintage automobiles — “especially nostalgic.” She wrote about walking from her childhood home along those tracks, family dog Kip at her side, to the deli on summer breaks. The two would sit on the wooden stairs, both drinking water while cooling off in the shade.

“It was like a Norman Rockwell painting: a kid and her dog at the country store,” Ballard wrote.

Charlene Carsen also wrote an essay for Newtown Scenes. A former resident herself, Carsen moved with her family into a home on Nearbrook Drive when she was six years old. Kuhn’s family “came later,” she noted, but the former neighbors have remained friends years after both moved away from what Carsen calls “our beloved Newtown.”

Her contribution to Newtown Scenes is the essay “The Giving River.” It accompanies Kuhn’s painting of the Pootatuck River, a section of which runs parallel to Nearbrook.

“It was what I had the most memories from, growing up along its banks,” said Carsen, who still lives near water. She and her husband live on the shoreline in Guilford.

Life on the Pootatuck, she wrote, “was nonstop entertainment.” Some of Carson’s happiest childhood memories were created during the 16 years she lived alongside the river, which is depicted in a 12- by 16-inch acrylic during autumn or early winter.

“It was our little utopia,” Carsen said of the river and her childhood neighborhood. “We were typical kids. We played kickball and dodgeball, and everything that went with that. We went Trick or Treating together, and sledding together.

“We loved swimming, and catching fireflies and putting them in jars,” said Carsen, who was also a member of Newtown Striders. “We really had an amazing situation there. We look upon it now with such joy.”

It is those memories — for many generations of Newtown residents, past and present — that Kuhn has worked to contain between the covers of Newtown Scenes.

“I’ve lived away for many years, and I know people who have no attachment to where they grow up,” Kuhn said. “But I think about that area every day, and the people I knew.

“I was very drawn to Newtown, even as a kid.”

Copies of Newtown Scenes: The Paintings of Rick Kuhn ($30) can be purchased through the artist’s website, rickkuhnarts.com, which also hosts the artist’s portfolio.