Sandy Hook Artist’s Exhibition Opens This Month—

Color, Form, And An Artist’s Imagination

By Shannon Hicks

Richard Budman’s paintings call out to a person the moment they walk into a room.

The paintings are bold, vibrant, and colorful. Punctuated with oranges, blues, and yellows, they’re also playful. Their surreal images — generally involving the human figure, which is usually naked — tell stories that vary from viewer to viewer.

A collection of Mr Budman’s work will be the next featured exhibition at Bethel Arts Junction. An opening reception is planned for Saturday, May 21, from 6 to 9 pm, and the public is welcome to meet the artist, take in his artwork, enjoy refreshments, and hear live music performed by The Ken Trapp Duo. The exhibition, which will remain on view until June 19, will include new works created for the show as well as some of Mr Budman’s older favorites.

Mr Budman and his wife, Susan, live in the Shady Rest section of Sandy Hook in a house that is open and airy. A livingroom with high ceilings and a pair of skylights is permeated by the canvases Mr Budman has painted. It is a very comfortable room, and it leads into another room where stacks of Mr Budman’s completed canvases lean against walls and furniture. In addition to the paintings on canvas there are vessels of varying shapes and sizes that have also been covered with Mr Budman’s face studies.

The colors of this artist’s works are as mesmerizing as the faces that find their way onto the canvas or glass. There are oranges, which Mr Budman says is the “strongest warm in the world” and it should find its way into the palette of every figure painter; blues, which is the strongest cool, neutralized by orange; and yellows, which are reflectors.

“I like to throw a lot of colors against each other,” he said. “When these colors run up against each other it creates an excitement because they’re unusual.”

The faces that come out of Mr Budman’s imagination these days are just that: something from memory.

“I don’t need to use models any more, not at this point in my life,” he said. “I have enough images in my head. I know what a woman looks like. I know what a hand looks like. All I have to do is go into the library in my head and pull one out.

“We have so much in our heads. That’s why we forget things,” he continued. “We need to pull things out sometimes and make space.”

The paintings around the Budman home — the same ones that will fill the Bethel Arts Junction gallery later this month — offer a great explosion of color and form that have been controlled by a man who has been wielding a pencil or paintbrush for most of his life.

Mr Budman can still recall some of his first attempts at art. As a child growing up in Philadelphia he was housebound for a spell with scarlet fever. The imagination of a young boy kept him entertained.

“I would look out the window and watch the passing scenes,” he said. “There were a lot of horses in the streets at that time, so I started drawing them.”

Horses were the subject of a mural Mr Budman was allowed to paint in the library of his school at the age of 11.

“I drew horses all the time, until I found out about women,” he laughed.

After attending the Museum College of Art and the Tyler School of Fine Arts, Mr Budman had his first solo show in 1955.

“It wasn’t monumental, but it was my first,” he said.

In 1984 he was the featured artist at River Gate Convention Center during the World’s Fair in New Orleans. Three years later he was awarded a solo show at Temple University. “Figurescapes: Recent paintings by Richard Budman” was presented in the Philadelphia university’s gallery in April and May 1987.

“The Temple show was a big honor,” Mr Budman recalled recently. “It was a spring show, so I was really thrilled.”

While the majority of his career has been devoted to working on canvas, the vessel paintings are Mr Budman’s new additions.

“Those were started after I injured my rotator cuff last year,” he explained. “I couldn’t handle the canvases for a while, but I could hold a vase and still be able to paint.”

One of his concerns these days is finding his way around a landscape that is peppered with work very unlike his own.

“Newtown is pretty conservative with its art. I hope I can do something here,” said Mr Budman, who has a regular buyer on the West Coast. “I have one guy who lives in Beverly Hills and he collects my work regularly. I sell well in L.A., but not here.

“There are a lot of watercolors and landscapes being done here. I’m not knocking that, don’t get me wrong. They’re wonderful,” he said quickly. “But it’s just not me. I did that kind of work years ago. It’s not me any more.”

Also in the past is mural work, which sustained him for a number of years.

“I did many mural paintings, for a long time,” he said. “Murals were very popular before paneling came around. I enjoyed doing murals. I paint large anyway.”

It’s turning into a good season for Mr Budman. In addition to next weekend’s opening at Bethel Arts Junction, he is preparing for another show, in Halifax, Va., the details of which were still in the air at the time of the interview for this story.

About five weeks ago one of his paintings was accepted into “The Joy of Survival — Expressions of The Cancer Journey Through Art.” Presented by The Community Cancer Collaborative (CCC), the exhibition of paintings, drawings, photography, poetry, handwork, and sculpture by cancer survivors and those affected by cancer will be presented from June 2 to June 30 at Danbury Hospital’s Praxair Cancer Center.

Next month one of Mr Budman’s paintings will be included in the 2005 Housatonic Museum of Art Annual Open Juried Show, marking the first time one of his works will be presented in a museum setting. The HMA show will be on view June 1–30; its opening reception will be Thursday, June 5. (The museum is on the campus of Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport. Call 203-332-5052 or visit www.hctc.comment.edu/ArtMuseum for additional information.)

Also next month, Mr Budman will be leading a one-day workshop at Bethel Arts Junction. “Creativity” will encourage participants to unlock their imaginations, and put those images onto paper. The workshop will be on Saturday, June 18, from 10 am to 4 pm.

Cost is $45, which covers sketchbooks and colored pencils (but participants are welcome to bring their medium of choice if they want to work with something different). All levels of artists are welcome.

Contact Mr Budman directly for details or reservations. He can be reached at 270-3779 or rmanbud@aol.com.

Having been an artist for so long, Mr Budman can appreciate how difficult it can be for someone to survive only with the funds generated from the sale of one’s artwork. Fortunately he was able to save money during his “career years,” when he covered North America as a national sales manager of a hair color manufacturer. He developed and sold lines, from design and color charts to packaging and sales.

“It didn’t matter, though. No matter where I was, I wasn’t working as a sales manager. I was a painter,” he said.

Richard and Susan moved from Pennsylvania to Connecticut in 1987, finding a home in Danbury. Two years later they moved into their current home in Sandy Hook.

Today Mr Budman concentrates on his artwork, even if it doesn’t fit into a preconceived idea of what works in Fairfield County.

“I use a lot of oranges in my work,” he explains. “I was told that orange doesn’t sell in Connecticut, and they were right.

“But I don’t have to paint to match sofas anymore,” he says, referring to his former mural work where homeowners would want the paintings going onto their walls and ceilings to coordinate with their furniture.

“I do what I enjoy, and we’re going OK,” he said. “There’s nothing else I was to do. I don’t want to be President. I don’t want to be a movie star, or a dog catcher. I’m doing what I want to do and that’s just fine.”

(Bethel Arts Junction is at 5 Depot Place (it’s the red building that was formerly the Bethel train station), immediately off Greenwood Avenue.

Hours are Thursday and Sunday, 1 to 4 pm; and Friday and Saturday, 1 to 8 pm. The gallery is also open on Wednesday evenings from 7:30 until about 10, when a weekly poetry program is presented. Call 798-2193 for additional information.)