Immediacy, simplicity draw artist to watercolors
For Stetz, benefits
outweigh medium’s
unforgiving nature
BY SHERRY CONOHAN
Staff Writer

PHOTOS BY CHRIS KELLY Artist Robert J. Stetz is exhibiting his work at the Monmouth Beach Cultural Center through March 7. At right is one of the watercolors on display.

Robert J. Stetz remembers the day several years ago when his son, Doug, brought a friend to his home studio to look over one of his works in progress.

"I heard him tell his friend, ‘It doesn’t look like too much now, but usually when he gets it done, it looks pretty good,’ " Stetz said with a chuckle. "I considered that the ultimate compliment."

Stetz, a municipal engineer with T&M Associates, began painting as a hobby shortly after he married 37 years ago. He counts his wife, Pam, and two sons as his biggest fans. Son Doug is now a graduate student in business at Monmouth University, West Long Branch, and son Steven works in television.

He considers himself his harshest critic and said his wife comes to the rescue of many paintings that he wants to toss out as rejects.

“Shady Characters”

"There’s a lot of throwaways," he said. "My wife always wants to save these things."

That’s probably a good thing, since the public seems happy to buy almost everything he paints.

At a reception held Sunday at the Monmouth Beach Cultural Center, in connection with the opening of his current show there the previous Wednesday, guests were quickly snapping them up. Of the 18 paintings on display, two belong to his sons and were not for sale and all but three of the rest had sold by the end of the opening reception. All the paintings will remain on display until the end of the show on March 7.

"The paintings are like Bob — they’re calm," one of the attendees at the reception remarked.

Stetz, a resident of Monmouth Beach, works in watercolors, which he said are unforgiving.

"When you put it on the paper, you can’t take it off," he said. "When working with oils, if you make an error, you can paint over it or scrape it off. Watercolors are instantaneous. You get your results pretty quickly."

Stetz said his favorite among the paintings in this exhibit was a stack of sunbonnets on a vertical rack. The inspiration came from a scene he saw at Sickles Market in Little Silver and he named his painting of it "Shady Characters." At $550, it was the most expensive work in his show and one of the three paintings that had not been sold after the reception.

Stetz said he gets much of his inspiration from scenes he sees while on vacation. He takes photographs of them and paints from the pictures. This resulted in several western paintings from trips to Arizona and Texas.

One of the paintings in the current exhibit, "Suburban Cowboy," shows a young boy in a cowboy hat leaning on a fence, looking at something in the distance. Stetz said he saw the boy wearing a cowboy hat leaning on a railing at a hotel where he was staying in San Antonio, Texas. He snapped a picture and then switched the fence for the railing in the painting.

Stetz recently went to Australia with his older son, Steven, who was working for ESPN and was assigned to the Australian Open tennis tournament. He said he traveled between Sydney and Melbourne, and brought home a lot of photographs and a journal full of notes. He also brought home "field paints" done in watercolors that will be the basis for his next group of paintings.

"There are some places in Australia that I would not want to live, but the people are wonderful," he said.

Stetz said one of his favorite watercolorists is Australian artist Malcolm Beattie. He said he knew Beattie’s work before he went to Australia and had the opportunity to view it firsthand while he was there.

"He paints kind of in my style," Stetz said.

Closer to home, Stetz said he admires the works of Pennsylvania artist N.C. Wyeth and his son, Andrew Wyeth. He noted that N.C. Wyeth created the original illustrations for "Treasure Island."

"I looked at that, and I was very impressed with the dedication he had," Stetz said.

Stetz said that as he became more serious about his art, he got into more expensive equipment and learned about different techniques, paper and pigments. He said that overworking a picture by constantly layering on paint is the worst thing an artist can do.

"I think what makes watercolors so appealing is that it’s one color with a couple of values, and that’s the picture," he said. "I like to work on larger pictures. I just enjoy the larger scale.

"They are much harder to frame," he acknowledged. "They are much harder to hang. Not everybody wants a 30-by-40-inch picture."

Still, his large painting, "Double Income…No Kids," depicting a couple sitting on a beach, was quick to sell at the reception.

Stetz said he enjoys eavesdropping on viewers looking at his paintings to hear what they are saying, bad and good.

"I have a very thick skin. It doesn’t offend me," he said.

Stetz said he first started painting when he was 9 years old. His father had died, and his mother, who worked, insisted that he and his older sister and younger brother have projects to keep them busy after school. He said they all took up music initially, but then he turned to drawing.

"People told me I had some kind of ability," he said. "I kept it up until high school, then I dropped it."

Stetz, who was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., graduated from Pennsylvania State University in civil engineering. He said his eye as an artist has helped him in his work.

"I think that my art work enables me to look at things differently from the engineering concept," he said. "It increased my observance of things.

"When I look at things, it helps me look at the entire picture. I think I can probably envision a finished product a little more readily than someone who doesn’t have a background in art," he said.

When he was in college, Stetz came to New Jersey for a summer job as a surveyor in Montclair. When he graduated, the company hired him full time. He worked in East Orange while he and his wife lived in Roselle Park.

The couple eventually moved to Eatontown and built their present home in Monmouth Beach in 1981. Former colleagues of his in East Orange who had moved to T&M Associates convinced him to join the firm.

Stetz said Monmouth Beach is a wonderful place to live and raise children.

"How many places in New Jersey can you walk to school or to the corner store?" he asked. "It’s been good for us."

Stetz is particularly pleased with the Monmouth Beach Cultural Center, which opened in May 2000. He said he is happy to have it as a venue for his art.

"I just like this place," Stetz said. "I’m particularly happy to see that it’s filled [with artists] to 2006. That tells you that people accept the fact that this is a legitimate place to come and show their work. There are not many places in Monmouth County where you can do this."

The center is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.

Despite all his experience and success, Stetz said he still considers himself a "struggling artist."

"I don’t think I could make a living at it, but I really enjoy it," he said. "I never wanted to make a business out of it because I enjoyed it too much, and I thought that once that I turned it into a business, it would lose its appeal."

Stetz said he thinks there are a lot of other people who could enjoy painting as he does. When he retires, he would like to teach people interested in developing their talent.

"It doesn’t have to be great," he said. "You just get so much enjoyment out of it."