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His Story

     The realization that Tony loved art came in his elementary school years.

     In 1964 the San Mateo Elementary School district did not promote art as a class; however a certain 3rd grade teacher of his, Ms. Bentley, introduced her students to art appreciation by showing the class films and slide presentations of impressionist, post impressionist and modern works of art.  Her introduction to art that was presented to us students was from the works of Modigliani, Renoir, Van Gough, Cézanne, Cassatt, Degas, Monet, Matisse and Picasso.

   Tony recalls this teacher and class very well and especially remembers being confused at seeing the world the way that Picasso saw it and painted it, and thought it unusual how he drew people in such an asymmetrical and contorted way.  

      After this introduction into art Ms. Bentley had the children paint from with inspiration from the slide presentation.  The medium she chose was watercolor.  So Tony drew on what he had visualized from the slide presentations.  Stimulated by the Beatlemania of the day; he painted Ringo Starr in high contrast black and white.  This won him the honor of being one of the few students that had their work selected from his Elementary School District to go on tour to Japan.

     His art laid dormant for years with small art projects in school classes until Tony entered into the 9th grade, he took an art metals class from Mr. Smiser at Aragon High School;  there he experimented with figural metal sculpture  (sub page of People Tools and Objects.)

     At age 42 Tony started to take his art seriously again. With the assistance of his brother-in-law Michael;  they set out for University Art in Berkeley where he stocked up on watercolor paint, watercolor pencils and 120 lb paper.  There Tony began his self imposed curriculum of copying the masters of impressionism and discovered through this process how Picasso saw the world. 

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