After graduating from high school in 1974, I went on a trip to Europe with Fr. John Becker and nine other S.I. graduates. Six weeks as “Volkswagen Vagabonds” driving through the beautiful countryside of that historic continent. Dad was spending time in Europe those days as well, especially in Switzerland, studying the possibility of electrifying the Southern Pacific Railroad. On my trip, I was especially taken by the beauty of the Alpine scenery – something I had seen in dad’s photographs – and a part of the world that I knew was close to his heart.

When I got home, I made this painting. It’s oil on a canvas board, 18 x 24 inches. Roughly based on the Castle of Chillon on Lake Geneva, it’s mostly a product of my imagination. My “studio” those days was the breakfast room in the house on De Soto Street – a room filled with the aroma of mom’s good midwestern cooking and my turpentine and linseed oil.

Mom and dad loved it, of course. For the next 41 years it had a privileged place in their living room – first on De Soto Street, then Hemway Terrace and finally at Mercy Center in Oakland. It now lives with me, in my room at Jesuit High School in Sacramento. A reminder of a time when I had a lot more patience with the brush and an ever-present connection to the encouragement given to a young artist by his mom and dad.

I also posted two photos of this painting in mom and dad’s living room. The photo of mom was taken shortly after their move to Mercy Center in 2010. The photo of dad, while not of great quality, is special to me. It’s of his last Christmas, in 2014. (He didn’t have any Christmas decorations, since mom had always taken care of that, so I got him a little tree and gathered as many choo-choo train ornaments as I could find: a railroad tree for the old railroad man. That tree now lives in Sacramento with me as well.)

Portrait of the Artist as a (very) Young Man sometime in the 1960’s. This photo was taken by Mr. Sam Provanzano in his studio in San Francisco. Somewhere my mom heard about him and either she or dad would drive me down to his studio on Saturday mornings. I remember that his studio was on the second floor of a big warehouse on the Embarcadero. Incredibly cool. Sam was a well known local painter who taught students of all ages in order to support his own craft. He encouraged the very shy kid seen above to explore his creativity.

I remember doing lots of paintings of San Francisco sites. One technique Sam taught me was to freely use bright colors to paint the impressions of what I saw (or imagined) and then to clarify or form the shapes more fully by delineating them with black paint using the edge of a piece of cardboard. Fun and ordinary. Cardboard. The Golden Gate Bridge. Coit Tower. Fishermans’ Wharf. And a caring teacher. 

Sam died in 1999 and mom sent me the obituary that was in the Chronicle. I feel blessed to have been taken under the wing of such a kind and generous man. He encouraged me to know and feel that I could do something (and be someone) special. Provanzano obituary