George Pillorgé sees things from a different perspective. It’s through his eyes that we can see the beauty of “Everyday Life and Places,” which opens Friday at the Center for Spiritual Care.
As a young boy, he loved to draw, says Pillorgé, but he doesn’t see his early work as anything more than “what all children love to draw.”
After flipping through the catalogue of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pillorgé thought architecture sounded “really interesting.” He graduated from M.I.T. and went on to Harvard for master’s degrees in architecture in urban design and city planning. He was awarded the Grunsfeld Prize from M.I.T. and a Fulbright Fellowship for studies in Paris.
Other than a stint teaching at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Pillorgé spent his career working in Baltimore for RTKL, an international architectural firm.
“This was at a time when cities were beginning to be redeveloped. We designed the rebuilding of key parts of Baltimore,” recalls Pillorgé. Before retiring, he led the urban design team on the Baltimore Orioles baseball stadium project at Camden Yards.
For Pillorgé, architecture is the framework for his art. “I think that architecture is so appealing because it draws on your whole brain. It’s not left brain or right brain. It’s really a kind of technical and artistic feel that has to consider both. That’s where my art starts. I can’t just start working on a painting, I have to plan it.”
Pillorgé retired in 1992, and he and his wife Debbie set sail on a 44-foot sailboat, the Puffin. The couple spent the next eight years sailing from Maine to Venezuela. It was during this time that he picked up a paintbrush and began to paint small watercolor studies capturing scenes from the boat deck as they went where the wind blew them.
A full life of experiences was Pillorgé’s training ground for what he refers to as his “third career.” He didn’t begin to seriously hone his skills as an artist until about eight years ago, when he and his wife traded in their sea legs and became land dwellers once again.
“In a way, I think our time on the boat made us both hungry to pursue our interests,” says Debbie Pillorgé, herself a pianist and oboist. “George started watercolors on the boat. I tried to bring a guitar on board but had to sleep with it in my bunk, and that didn’t work so well.”
Pillorgé began to experiment with pastels as a medium and Debbie picked up her oboe once again. “It’s nice to know you can still learn things at our tender ages,” she says with a chuckle.
The creative couple credit their recent accomplishments to the encouragement of others. Debbie has studied under Marcos Flores in her resurrection of her musical interests. Pillorgé takes great pleasure in his wife’s music; he admits that after seeing her perform in a little concert at Connecticut College all those years ago, he was a goner.
As in everything he pursues, Pillorgé sought out professionals and took art lessons first in Maryland and then at the Vero Beach Museum of Art with Dawn Miller and Deborah Gooch. Miller helped him to get down the anatomy of the human figure and Gooch worked with him to loosen things up a bit.
Gooch wasn’t the first to realize her humble student had something special. He had already won top honors in human figure drawing from the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland. And twice he has taken first place in the Vero Beach Art Club’s Art by the Sea exhibition.
Of their teachers and mentors Debbie Pillorgé says, “These people have really made it meaningful for us. They’ve taught us so much and been so encouraging. That is one common element for both music and art. You are going to get better at it, but it’s work.”
According to Carol Ludwig, the Center for Spiritual Care director, it was Gooch that first brought Pillorgé’s work to her attention.
“She spoke to me about him and said this guy has only been painting eight or 10 years but he’s amazing. He’s really grabbing hold of it.”
Pillorgé brought some of his work over for Ludwig to take a look at, she recalls. “On the face of it the topic is ho-hum, but his execution was so amazing and so wonderful. The more I saw of his work, the more I realized that this guy is on to something. He’s a really terrific artist.”
On another level, Pillorgé’s work is perfectly in tune with the Center, explains Ludwig. “The whole idea of everyday people and places is what the center is all about. We’re not all great at everything. We’re never going to be good at everything. We have to get over that in our lives. His work represents everybody, everywhere. It gives an authenticity to our own experiences.”
What most people would pass by without a second thought, Pillorgé stops to watch. An elderly lady reading the newspaper on a cold winter day at Panera has a crutch leaning against her chair. From Pillorgé’s perspective, one wonders why she needs the crutch, where she’s come from and what she will be doing later that day. The painting draws the viewer into her story.
In a recent review, Warren Obluck describes Pillorgé’s work as painterly, comparing his style to the likes of Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse and Larry Rivers. He extolls his use of light and perspective. “As a result, even in his most Florida-centric pieces we see the sunrise, not in the sky but soaking into the sand of an early morning beach.”
As for the man behind the art, Ludwig says, “This is a man who has had a huge career with an international architectural firm doing stuff all over the world. You would think he might be full of himself but he’s humble and eager and curious and always learning.”
Confucius once said “everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” At 80, Pillorgé is up early in the morning walking along the boardwalk, camera in hand, looking for the beauty: looking at people, looking at everyday life and everyday places. He has a file full of photographs of people and places he wants to give a new perspective. He’s looking from a different place.
As visitors look at George Pillorgé’s paintings Friday, wife Debbie will play oboe with the Tropical Winds Quartet.
The reception for “Everyday Life and Places” is from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Center for Spiritual Care, located at 24th Street.