Don Purdy’s Paintings Take An Imaginary Look At Life

By Shannon Hicks

A new exhibition of paintings by the artist Donald Purdy has quietly opened at C.H. Booth Library. The collection will remain on view on the library’s main floor until May 12.

Mr Purdy, who has lived with his wife Lisa in Newtown for 15 years, recently donated one of his paintings to the library. The playful circus scene is now in the library’s permanent collection, and is hanging in the children’s department of the library. It was during the selection process of that painting that library director Janet Woycik invited Mr Purdy to loan some of his paintings for an exhibition.

Mr Purdy celebrated his 80th birthday last weekend. Eight decades have not slowed this man’s mind, nor his artistic output. Mr Purdy makes time to paint daily. He and his wife live in the huge gray-blue house that was the first home built on Equestrian Ridge. For years the Purdys had only forest land between the back of their house and the Newtown-Redding town line.

From Poverty Hollow Road, their house is on the hill behind Red Gate Farm — the former Lufkin home, it’s hard to miss. It is a grand house that from the outside seems too large for just two people, but Don and Lisa Purdy have become quite comfortable in their home.

Walking into his house is like walking into a different design scheme than what is expected from the looks of the home’s exterior. Outside, the house is all angles and wings — it is very modern looking.

Inside, however, the house is very comfortably decorated with furniture and rugs of many eras, and the walls are covered with paintings that date from Old Masters to modern works. It does not feel like a museum, however. With the smell of Lisa’s cooking permeating the air, it feels like a home when the Purdys greet their visitors.

“This house is meant for an artist,” Mr Purdy pointed out. “It’s filled with light, everywhere.”

One entire wall in the kitchen — where a drawing of a dragon by one of the Purdys’ grandsons currently dominates the refrigerator — seems to be all glass. From the sink line to the high ceiling, windows overlook the back rings of Red Gate Farm and allow light to bathe the Purdys’ kitchen. The entire house works like that. Light fills every room.

One thing visitors are quick to notice is that while paintings cover the walls of the home’s rooms on the main floor, none of them are Mr Purdy’s works.

“I’m not allowed to have my paintings down here,” the artist said with a smile.

“He’s confiscated the whole upstairs!” wife Lisa is quick to say, and it is true. The upstairs walls and bedrooms are filled with paintings by Mr Purdy.

When he is painting, he can choose from a studio set up on the second floor of his home or a studio that is in the northwest wing of the main floor. He can work in the second floor studio year-round, but the main floor studio does not hold much heat during the winter months.

Both studios are filled with the light he so craves, but each has benefits during different seasons. These days visitors can find Mr Purdy in the second floor studio, which is ringed with paintings that are at various stages of completion.

“I become absorbed and immersed in whatever I’m doing,” he says. This is true, whether he is working outside — as he was the day of his interview, when he was painting the exterior of his house — or indoors, on his paintings. He emerges from work covered in paint.

“I don’t buy new clothing for this reason. They’re only going to get covered in paint,” he said. Away from painting, Mr Purdy says he is a very neat person.

His recent paintings include a series of girls skinny dipping, which combines two of his strongest themes: beach scenes and people.

“These are just fun scenes,” he said, scanning his studio for some of those works. There are stacks of paintings in his studio — beach scenes, still lifes, woodland scenes, and many circus scenes, all containing his pontilistic painting style.

The scenes he creates are sometimes loosely based on childhood memories, but everything is imaginary at its core.

“Everything is very make-believe with me,” he said.

Mr Purdy’s idea of a completed painting varies from the idea of many others. If a painting is still in his possession, he is in the habit of picking up a painting that is years old and reworking it.

“I can keep making adjustments,” he said, “like an author. I’ve worked on paintings sometimes for as long as 15 years. The pressure in this world is to produce, to not spend too much time on any one thing. I can keep seeing mistakes or weaknesses to fix.”

One painting right in the studio right now is dated 1983, but Mr Purdy picked it up and worked on it again just last week.

“I interact with a picture,” he explained. “I constantly need to interact with them, which is why I hold on to them so long.”

Mr Purdy’s presence in Newtown may be low-key, but his work is recognized and collected by museums across the country. At least five museums have his work in their permanent collections: Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Chrysler Museum of Art, Richmond, Va.; Cincinnati Art Museum; Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Me.; and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Va.

He is represented by The Greenwich Gallery in Greenwich, which is co-owned by his daughter Abby. Mr Purdy’s children — in addition to Abby he has another daughter, Amy, and a son, Duncan — all show artistic gifts.

He has been listed in the 1986, 1993-94 and 2003-04 editions of Who’s Who in American Artists.

Don Purdy is a lifelong Connecticut resident. He was born in Bridgeport and lived in Norwalk and Wilton before moving into Newtown 15 years ago.

He went to college, but it was not to study art. He trained to become a psychiatrist — and still uses many of the skills he learned decades ago in conversations to this day — putting in seven years of training. But once he completed the required work for his degree, he says, he decided he really wanted to be a painter.

 “I never wanted to take a course in art,” he said last week. “Painting was always so intuitive. I’m completely self-taught.

“That’s probably why it’s been kind of slow-going for me,” he added with a grin.

He may see his work as slow going, but the inventory of his home belies that idea.

In addition to a wonderful collection of his own works, Mr Purdy’s home is also chock-a-block with paintings by other artists and bronze sculptures, mainly horses, because he is also an art dealer.

Every closet is full of paintings that he will sell through a dealer. An old-fashioned drip-dry closet and even a maid’s room have been turned into storage space for paintings of myriad artists, styles, and eras. Even a potting shed has been turned into a room filled with bronze sculpture.

“He’s a gem,” says Caroline Stokes, who went with Booth Library director Janet Woycik to visit Mr Purdy’s home recently. “He deals with people all over the country and here he is right in our town.

“We’re so thrilled to have his work at the library,” continued Mrs Stokes, who serves as the town library’s curator. “It’s such a treat for us.”