'A drama of buoyancy': Artist's gardener talks about Nell Blaine and their work together

American artist Nell Blaine was known the world over for her paintings, often depicting flowers from her Gloucester garden.

Her gardener is Martin Ray, a Gloucester stonemason and sculptor, who will be the featured speaker at the next Gloucester Lyceum event at 2 p.m. Saturday at Sawyer Free Library.

Ray's Lyceum talk will be based on his 14 years of garden work for Blaine, his correspondence with her and a 1992 interview with her. During the program, "A Painter and her Garden: Working with Nell Blaine," Ray will show photographs that he took as well as many illustrations of her paintings. Mary Weissblum, chairwoman of the Lyceum and one of Blaine's neighbors, will read excerpts from artist's letters.

In 1957, Life magazine chose Blaine (1922-1996) as one of five women artists rising to prominence in America. Like many noted artists before her, Blaine visited Cape Ann frequently in the 1950s and 1960s, likely inspired by the more sedate yet colorful surroundings as compared to New York City. She would eventually become a regular summer resident. In Gloucester, Blaine painted almost exclusively in and from her gardens. Many of her best-known works depict these gardens and their flowers. She also was known for her landscape paintings.

Raised in Richmond, Va., Blaine moved to New York City in 1942 where she became part of the thriving artistic community, working first as a realist, later delving into the abstract. She would develop a sophisticated balance between the two movements over the decades.

Ray described Blaine as the Southern girl who became an integral part of the New York avant garde in the 1940s.

"From the mid-1950s, she cultivated an increasingly painterly and colorful style, usually working directly from nature, or still life, with particular emphasis on the forms and hues of flowers. Her work retained a sense of all-over structure and pulsating energy that she nonetheless credited to abstract art," according to her obituary in the New York Times.

Blaine's life took an abrupt turn when in 1959, she contracted polio while on the Greek island of Mykonos, where she had spent months painting. She would spend the next eight months — five in an iron lung — in a hospital in New York, where 79 artists came together to sell their art to raise money to pay her medical bills.

Now wheelchair bound, she refused to let her physical disabilities prevent her development as an artist. She had to learn to paint with her non-dominant hand because of the effects of the polio.

"Her primary subjects became the sweeping views of the Hudson River and its flanking highways as seen from the window of her apartment on Riverside Drive, and the more intimate setting of her garden in Gloucester, where she bought a home in 1975," according to the 1996 New York Times obituary.

Gloucester's Ray would meet the artist around 1980 when Blaine took note of a garden Ray cultivated nearby on the Rocky Neck Art Colony. He would eventually work for her.

Each growing season, the artist wanted new blooms and designs. Ray redesigned her garden each year to the artist's wishes, creating new forms and colors with which she would infuse her paintings.

"The design process never ended. They accomplished this complicated arrangement through letters that went back and forth all winter long," noted Jill Carter, a poet and member of the historic Gloucester Lyceum, of Ray and Blaine. Carter studied the artist as a Cape Ann Museum docent.

Blaine called her gardens her "third studio," according to Carter. "Many of Blaine's most well-known landscapes are of these gardens at her home on Ledge Road and their flowers."

"I had the privilege of knowing her and occasionally being invited to dinner," recalled Weissblum, the Lyceum chairman. "She was an extraordinary woman. Given she was so limited physically, you would have thought she'd have a dark view of life, but her paintings were an explosion of color and joy. She was a lively person and she continued to be that way."

Right-handed, Blaine learned to paint in oil with her left after contracting polio because it was the stronger of the two hands.

"All those Gloucester floral pieces came after she retrained herself," said Weissblum. "In addition to her daytime painting, she did a lot of painting at night — she stayed up late frequently. She'd have bouquets picked and arranged. She had a terrace at the back of her house where she'd go in her wheelchair and have everything arranged so she could work. She didn't keep a normal schedule. I'd be invited to dinner at 9 p.m. and she might not come down until 10 p.m."

Before she was ill, Blaine was a drummer and jazz aficionado, Weissblum said.

Blaine had a large circle of peers in the music and art worlds. Robert DeNiro Sr., the famous actor's father, an expressionist painter and sculptor, was her contemporary. Both studied with Hans Hofmann.

In spite of her disability, she remained a powerhouse, said Ray.

"She couldn't get out of bed on her own and she needed household staff, but she always painted and corresponded. Her paintings commanded hefty prices because her work was desired in the art world," he said. "She was a self-sufficient painting entrepreneur. She made people happy with her paintings."

Ray, who interviewed Blaine in 1992, talked about her artistic legacy.

"Anybody who has seen her work is riveted by it and appreciate her ability to find joy, beauty and rhythm in the scenes she painted. Sometimes the scenes are outdoors and sometimes floral bouquets. The colors are always vibrant," he said. "There is an inexpressible rhythm to her paintings, likely related to her interest in music. One has a strong sense of vibration and movement when you look at her work. She's very expressive in a rhythmic way. She was entwined in modern jazz in New York at the same time she was involved in painting."

Even without her physical challenges, Blaine's life achievements are remarkable. She was represented at the best galleries in New York.

Ray provided an example of her verve in a comment she made to him during their interview: "You want to have a certain freedom. You don't want rigidity. You want to give yourself a kick. CÃ©zanne said he's just searching for his little sensation, right? While I wish to analyze and penetrate nature, I also wish to engage my imagination freely."

Ray thinks of Blaine's life as a "drama of buoyancy."

"She defied circumstantial limitations," he said. "She wrested exuberant gardens from the rocky moors of East Gloucester overlooking the harbor."

Carter encourages residents to learn more about this American artist.

"I think the audience is going to be entranced," she said. "I think Martin is going to present one of this year's great programs. Being an artist himself, he writes and speaks with great sensitivity and insight. And his treasure trove of letters — they are museum-worthy; priceless windows into the mind of a working American artist."

Gail McCarthy may be contacted at 978-283-7000x3445 or gmcarthy@gloucestertimes.com.

IF YOU GO

What: "A Painter and her Garden: Working with Nell Blaine" at the Gloucester Lyceum.

Who: Martin Ray, a Gloucester stonemason and sculptor, will talk about his gardening work for the artist.

When: 2 p.m. Saturday.

Where: Friend Room at Sawyer Free Library, Dale Avenue, Gloucester.

How much: Free to the public.

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