Barry Geller:  “I Paint What I See and I see how I feel about it.”

By Joey Emil Blum ©2006

Barry Geller lives with his wife of fifty-three years, Nan, whom he met at Sequoia High School.  The two share a lovely house set in the woods outside of Eugene.

It is enjoyable to speak with Barry.  He is curious and warm in conversation about his life and work and his calm transfers to you leaving time to notice his spacious studio surrounded with his work, time to appreciate the soft infusion of jazz in the room.

Barry Geller was born in 1932.  His parents are the children of Russian Jews who came to the United States around the time of the Russian revolution.  “My grandfather on Dad’s side worked for the Czar.  Dad always told about a spiral staircase his father had made for the Czar that used no nails.” 

Sunday Painting and Bridal Gown Advertising 

The genes for Barry’s early passion for drawing came through his father who worked for a dress manufacturer in San Francisco before owning his own dress shops.  “He became a Sunday painter later in life.”  The two painted together when Barry was a child.  My Dad and I used to go out and paint on the weekends.  He would do oils and I would do watercolors.” 

“I’d drawn my whole life from the time I was in kindergarten but my mother was sort of ‘I don’t know, artists can’t make any money’ so it was ‘You’re good in math and you like to draw so you should be an aeronautical engineer.’  I didn’t know any better so I was thinking, okay.  But, my Dad was selling bridal gowns from his dress shop that he advertised in the San Francisco papers, The Examiner and the Chronicle, and he realized that if you were in advertising you could also make some money.  That’s why I studied   illustration and graphics.  It was a shift for him that it was okay to study art but it should be in the direction of advertising.” 

 “I just wanted to draw, paint, and learn how.  I spent two years in UCLA in the art department.  I was a freshman in 1950.  That was when the whole country was turning to abstract art and if you wanted to learn to draw the human figure, well that was all right, but it was sort of like it wasn’t going to be any good for anything.” 

One Good Teacher

“I spent two years at UCLA and then I transferred to San Jose State.  They had a major in Advertising Art.  While I was there I met someone who told me about the Los Angeles Art Center, now the Pasadena School of Design.  I had one special teacher, sometimes that’s all you need.  Jack Potter got me interested in illustration.” 

Animation, In Betweeners, and Not Recognizing Your Own Work 

“I still painted on the weekends when I left the art center and got a job in an animation studio in West Hollywood, doing television commercials.  It was fun for a while.  Everything was in black and white.  But if I designed a character, by the time it got to the film it had gone through maybe six different people and had often been changed by the director, the animator, the assistant animator, or the in-betweener.  Then it got filmed as pencil drawings, and then the inkers and the painters did the cells and then it was put on a film negative and printed in positive film.  When I did story boards I would draw the figure in a certain action and then the director would take that and decide how many steps were necessary to make it move, and the in-betweeners had to get the same figure from one posture to another at 24 frames a second, I got tired of that.  I just wanted to paint and draw so I took my portfolio to New York and got a job in a good art studio.” 

Happy To Get Paid To Do What I Was Going To Do Anyway. 

“I got hired by one of the best art studios and art directors, Herb Lubalin, in the city that won top awards. They hired me as just an illustrator, then a friend introduced me to an artists agent and I began to do freelance work at home.  I did freelance for seven years until styles changed and magazines began moving away from illustration and more to photo.  I became a partner in a design studio doing mostly corporate work including annual reports and logos.” 

“It was fine, because my attitude was that I was happy to get paid for what I was going to do anyway.  Sometimes it was very easy with clients, like ‘Do whatever you want and let me know when you’re done.’  One client was Playboy Magazine.  They’d just send me a manuscript and tell me how much space to fill and when they needed it done.  And I would do it.” 

“When I first started in illustration I had no confidence.  I would start, throw it away, start throw it away.  I didn’t know how I could ever finish anything on time but after a while I realized that if the start wasn’t good I could make it better.  I could change it without starting over.” 

Barry Has An Independent Streak. 

“Most illustrators were bought for style.  They {the clients} usually knew they’d get this pen and ink or other style, but when people hired me they never knew what they were going to get.  That’s what I liked.  I’m sure I disappointed a few people.” 

“Sometimes I would get an art director who would say, “Barry, can you do this like such and such or so and so, and maybe that art director’s budget didn’t allow them to hire that other artist, so they were looking for someone more affordable to do the job.  There was an artist who was very popular in the 60’s, Bob Peek.  His work was all over New York.  He was very popular, worked for the racetrack at the “Big A” (Aqueduct Horse Race Track) and every once in a while someone would say ‘Can you do something like Bob Peek?’  If my agent brought it home I’d say ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’ ” 

Barry worked for Esquire, Redbook, Playboy, Fortune, Ingénue, The New Leader, The Herald Tribune, ABC Television, to name only a few.  He illustrated world leaders, wrestlers, NY theatrical agents, Alex Haley, James Bond (Sean Connery), Jimmy Breslin, Bobby Kennedy, and Truman Capote.  If you’re over forty years old, you’ve probably seen something Barry illustrated. 

In a time during which America became an image driven culture, illustrators were powerful interpreters of their time bringing an artist’s soul to a world that would soon become dominated by the literal force of photography and television. 

“When I lived in New York City there was different stimulus than here in Eugene.  It was the 60’s, Civil Rights, Vietnam, expressing what was “going on.”  I did paintings of the Ku Klux Klan in negative imagery, the Klansmen in black sheets.  I did a lot of paintings about the Kennedy Assassination.” 

Barry submitted four pieces to the curator of the American Express Pavilion Art Show at the 1963-64 New York World’s Fair:  three, were rejected by the “Suits” at American Express for inclusion in the exhibit.  The three were images of Jesus, Hitler, and Adolf Eichmann painted in the style of a Levy’s kosher bread advertising campaign well known to New Yorkers.  The slogan for Levy’s bread was, “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s.”  Barry’s versions of the posters had the three with these sayings beneath them:
            “You don’t have to be Jewish to love.”  Jesus
            “You don’t have to be Jewish,” Eichmann
            “You don’t have to be.”  Hitler.
The New York Times art critic curating the show for American Express loved the pieces, but not so the decision makers at American Express.  Ironically, the one piece that made the exhibit was of purported “lone gunman” Lee Harvey Oswald standing in the Texas Book Depository in Dallas preparing to kill Kennedy.  That piece would later be desecrated while on exhibit at the Fair.  Says Barry, “In an odd sort of way it was O.K. because the painting must have effected the attacker on a deep level.” 

Were you painting to change the world? 

“No.  It was just self-expression.  It was certainly about what I thought about in the world.  The war in Vietnam was so stupid, and the Newspapers and Life Magazine were all so full of it.” 

“Around 1971, 1972 a lot of the illustration work dried up.” 

It Just Isn’t So Much Fun Anymore. 

“I left New York when I was working at Sutter and Geller.  I walked into my partner’s office and said “You know this isn’t much fun anymore, and he said, you know you’re right.  He was inheriting this trust fund and said I don’t have to do this either. 

Enter The Guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi 

“Nan and I started meditating in 1970 right after our second son, Josh, was born.  Nan had a serious problem with his birth and she thought meditation would be helpful in her recovery.  Nan is the adventurous one in our family so she learned, and when I saw how much it helped her, I decided to try it.  They had all sorts of courses you could go to in The Science of Creative Intelligence.” 

“We went to this conference in Amherst and Buckminster Fuller was there.  They had speakers from all over the country, one of them was Fuller, and other scientists and we went up there and, of course, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi spoke.  I had a sketchbook with me and while he spoke I did drawings of him and the other speakers.  People would look over at what I was doing, and then the person responsible for the conference asked to see my book and he said “You know, Marishi should see this.” And so a couple of days later I took it in to see Marishi and soon after that I started doing design work for the Transcendental Meditation Society.” 

“I did about 20 posters, and then he started Maharishi International University.  Maharishi and all the professors to be stayed at University of California at Santa Barbara and they brought me there with them and then they sent me to Santa Monica where M.I.U. press was.  It was a job and a connection.”  

Then I was called to Switzerland by Marishi, and it lasted for a couple of years when we lived in off-season hotels, in Lucerne and other cities while Josh was being taught by many different nannies.” 

Back To California. 

“When we came back to California I bought a print shop but ended up selling that after two years.  I even started a comic strip but that didn’t work out, and later I ended up illustrating a New York Times Bestselling book about Transcendental Meditation.”  (The Transcendental Meditation Book:  How to Enjoy the Rest of Your Life, was co-authored with Denise Denniston and Peter McWilliams) 

Barry and Nan’s spiritual voyage next took them to an Ashram outside of Austin Texas led by Swami Prakashanand Saraswati.  They lived there for three years until deciding to move closer to family.  With daughter Priya in Philadelphia, son Mitchell in California, and son Josh pursuing studies at the University of Oregon in Eugene, they had a few options.  Ultimately, finding a beautiful and affordable home in Eugene made the choice a little easier.  A “No Brainer” as Barry says. 

Eugene Oregon is Home Now. 

Now, living in Eugene, Barry enjoys painting the beauty he sees in women and in his portraits. He does so with a sincerity and empathy that is warm.  Barry sees the beauty of women and paints them as they sit in life drawing sessions. He can also extract the form of a female figure from a life drawing session and build outward from that into a world of high design and illumination.  He retains an illustrator’s gift, to extend with flair style and even subtle commentary.  Occasionally he adorns them with wings, an appendage perhaps that some of the models wish they had after sitting for hours.  Occasionally he adorns their bodies with gowns illuminated with shapes of color in a stylish display of transcendent whimsy. 

“My idea of what is a beautiful woman has changed a whole lot over the years.  I can find something beautiful about almost any woman and enjoy painting or drawing her, where as in the 1950’s it was mainly surface beauty that I saw.” 

In his early seventies now it is clear that Barry has seen a lot and the imagery produced in response to what he has seen is vast. 

Barry is a collector of images.  Whether vintage photos to gather inspiration for paintings, fashion photographs, or newspaper clippings.  Asked to reflect on the physical and internal dimensions of being an artist, Barry says, “That changes over time.  It’s different now than it was forty years ago.  Sometimes it has to do with where you live.  When I lived in New York City it was a different stimulus. 

Then, Barry reaches to his desk and shows me a powerfully evocative photograph he has clipped recently from the newspaper.  The photo shows three frightened Iraqi women wearing Burkas standing inside of a roofless home while staring at them from the other side of the opened doorway is a machine gun wielding American Soldier.  “Back then I would have painted that in a minute.” 

“Now, years later, I’ve just been looking for beauty and the female form is what has been inspiring me.” 

Are you less responsive to the world now?  Is that a comfort? 

“Well, it’s the difference between New York and here (Eugene).  When we lived in New York we were part of the Unitarian church and all the people were involved in politics and protest marches.  It’s also the time of the age, of the scene your in.  It’s easier to be angry about that stuff when you’re younger.  Also, after thirty years of a spiritual path with Mahesh Yogi and then Swami Prakashanand SaraswatI-- You become less attached. 

Is painting beauty done for your self or is it a gift to others? 

“Both.  Whatever vibrations are in the painting some people will pick up.
I’m not trying to shock people.  It’s about the feelings of myself and how the viewers see and feel.” 

When you talk with other artists, what do you talk about? 

“Who’s your gallery!  Barry lets out a big laugh at his answer 

On Selling And Pricing Your Work 

Barry quotes Corvallis artist and teacher Clint Brown, “Art isn’t art unless it sells.  Until then it’s an obsession and a storage problem.” 

“If we did it (art) only for the money, we couldn’t do it.  Most artists do their art because they have to.” 

Do you think artists have any special status, any inherent nobility? 

Barry is especially thoughtful before answering.  “No, if an artist is true to himself and a plumber is true to himself, there’s no difference.” 

I think it takes a lot of courage to call your self an artist.  Do you agree? 

“Sometimes.  I think at times it felt presumptuous, because, well, I think back on the great artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Matisse said something like a great artist changes how art is experienced.  Changes the vocabulary of art.  That’s what those artists did, and they were “artists”  (The quote at the start of the piece is the exact quote that Barry called to give me later). 

“Sometimes, someone will ask me what I do and I’ll say, I Paint.  For some they think that context is “Houses?”  Up until just recently if someone asked my occupation it would have said Illustrator or Graphic Designer, but now I’m okay saying artist.  It comes from within.” 

Then, Barry tells me a story that speaks, perhaps, to the life of an artist. 

“I got an email from someone last month who had recently bought a painting at the Alameda Flea Market, signed B. Geller, in the style of a Fifties watercolor.  There’s a resurgence of Fifties watercolor art.  He sent me an image of it and it was one of mine.  This painting was an alleyway scene.  I have no idea how it got there, but it was still in a frame my Dad did.  He used to do all the framing himself.  When I asked him how much he paid for it, he said $43.  I said that’s about what I would have gotten in the 1950’s for it.” 

Probing a deep man can lead to simplicity.  Perhaps the fulfillment to Barry’s artistic life is simply having the freedom he told me he values when I first met him:  to create without interventions or boundaries.  No rules, no right or wrong.  Art as simple and pure as, “I paint what I see, and I see what I painted.”