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I

SECRETS OF AN

AUTODIDACT

Early Work

and Portraits

The Magician OIL 24”x 18”

PETER REGEHR The Red Carpet OIL ON MASONITE 29” x 24”

AS YOUNGSTER, idea of growing up to be an artist did not occur to me. Art was a steady, ongoing process from the beginning. I never looked upon it as a career or a job. It was a way of life.

As an adult, not much has changed except that I am more aware of art-making as a constant state of becoming—a way of life where the growing up never ends.

Since early childhood I have been making work. My father’s painting studio was in the house. Pencils, paper, ink and paint were always available. As far as I was concerned, art was as important to life as eating or breathing.

My attitude was not shared by other children, as I soon learned in elementary school in Victoria, Canada.

My teacher asked Rhonda Williams, the prettiest girl in the Primary Division to model for art class. She was wearing a dark sweater, tartan skirt, white ankle socks, and oxfords. Fairly standard attire for the early 1960s, but not very interesting I thought.

I mentally removed Rhonda’s clothing and proceeded to draw the little girl in the nude. I saw nothing wrong with this. My father was painting a nude at home. I wanted Rhonda to appear as a goddess of nature, like T. Hart Benton’s Persephone, a copy of which I had seen in my father’s book on American painting.

My ink drawings progressed and Rhonda grew breasts, hips, and long flowing hair. Suddenly the teacher loomed over my shoulder. She was horrified. Rhonda was mortified. I was tongue-tied. The drawings were confiscated, and I was caned across the backside in front of the class.

Pride swallowed humiliation. I knew my drawings were special. Even though my draftsmanship was never considered to be any good (I was told often enough that it looked like scribbling), it somehow seemed “right” to me. They were part of me. The episode gave me an early sense that my art work was growing up to be my life. Later, I discovered that acting and writing would also be a part of this life.

Rhonda INK ON PAPER

Crane“PRETTY” WORK

Crane “SPECIAL” WORK

Perhaps one negative result of the incident was that it drove me to work in secret. To this day, my process remains very private. I certainly stopped drawing nudes for many years.

I developed two types of material. “Pretty” work for school, which kept everyone else happy, and “special” work for myself, which dealt with my true feelings and ideas. I hid everything in the space where I slept behind the basement stairs.

I showed a little of my work to another teacher, Miss Pottinger, a gifted art instructor, who encouraged me to develop my colors. She would speak of color as though it were something rich and secret to eat, like dark chocolates, and referred to my paint box as “a treasure trove of jewels.”

She tried unsuccessfully to cure my habit of working with both hands. I had been trained to write the (supposed) right way, but I saw no reason why I had to apply the rule to art. I saw no reason for applying it to writing either, but I was told that I would always smear my own scribbles. I frequently and automatically changed hands whilst painting and was equally good at smearing with both.She called this ambidextrous switching “fidgeting.”

Miss Pottinger felt that my assignments were messy and lopsided (a kind understatement) and that fidgeting was due to poor concentration. She was correct, but only halfway. My creations were terribly confused, but only because I had not trained my hands to act harmoniously upon one subject, like those of a pianist. One hand thinks and feels differently from the other, hence it was not lack of concentration, but split concentration that caused my problems.

This syndrome threads its way through most of my life. I am of two minds about nearly everything (sexuality being an exception); having a compulsion to seek contrast, analogy, and balance in everything I experience.

Today, all of my painted efforts are the result of fidgeting, but my line drawings are formed singularly by one hand or the other (smears and all).

Crane “PRETTY” WORK

Miss P. WATERCOLOR 20” x 16”

Picasso OIL 30”x24”

Self Portrait (LINE DRAWING SERIES) PEN AND INK 18”x24” 1989

Skating, ten years old

Throughout the 1960s, my parents were taken with the idea that I might grow up to be a successful figure skater. Although I had other plans for myself, I pursued this artistic sport mostly to please them. They could ill afford the lessons. While I enjoyed freestyle skating, I resented the long hours of patch (precise lines, repeatedly etched one on top of the other and contained within a small rectangle of ice) which required my mind and body to focus on variations of the figure eight. During these sessions my imagination spiraled far away from those frozen patterns.

Skating was a backhanded gift. It taught me discipline and gave me an understanding of the moving body as an art form.

When I look at details of my pen and ink drawings and some of my earlier paintings, I see in their lines the swirling edges carved by a skate blade.

I was in awe of my father’s paintings. Peter Regehr emigrated from Russia in 1926. As one-tenth of a Mennonite family, he grew up in the cradle of poverty on a farm in southern Alberta. Prairie landscapes and animals often dominate his subject matter.

I envy his solid draftsmanship. His creations are powerfully connected to the earth. My strongest childhood memories of him always include the garden where we grew vegetables ... and built stone walls.

My father tried to give me pointers from time to time, but I was far too intimidated to show him any of my “special” work. I was an elusive pupil and I kept much of myself hidden from my family. Admittedly, I was attracted to the romance of keeping secrets, but I was convinced that I, my work and the way in which I worked, would never be accepted. I withdrew to develop on my own. In time, I grew more skillful and became comfortable enough to come out of hiding. I left home as the 1960s ended.

Nag’s Flight-Equus INK AND WATERCOLOR 18”x24” 1972

Peter the Rock-for my father

My father’s hands are seventy-five,

With gorges and lattice fissures,

Where oceans and prairie swept

An iron darkness in stained knuckles.

Shale-sheathed palms challenge gravel

Winds and tenderness.

Cobbling in fingers and callouses, inlaid

With sea shells, petroglyphs and lava

Is the need to never tire.

But never a changer

Or strip-miner bound by Midas’ gloves.

This rearranger heaves gravity

Delicate like a child.

And shifts granite by dainty fulcrum

To caress a flower’s bed.

— DR

PETER REGEHR Stone Horse CASEIN ON MASONITE 16” x 21”

Teaching me to read at a very young age was my mother’s greatest gift. I inherited her love of the classics, of which she retains a vast knowledge. Although we lived far out in the country, she insisted that her four children make regular visits to the city library. We had no television and I fell in love with literature. It soon found its way into my special work. I would disappear into the woods for hours, acting out entire novels and reciting poetry and plays. During the course of a week, I would be Robin Hood, Hiawatha, Romeo, Grendel, Odysseus, Fagan, Moses, and all three of the Musketeers. By the age of twelve, I had a sense that my life would also include acting and writing.

Indian OIL 30” x 24”

Over the years I have learned through a natural process of experience how to focus energy and different states of mind for my mediums of expression. All require emotional investigation. To act, I must become an extrovert. Writing and painting are more introverted art forms. To juggle them all, to switch back and forth amongst them, or join them together by related themes, has always been wonderfully complicated. During my teens and early twenties, focus and concentration often eluded me.

In 1969, Dr. Ralph Allen, who later produced Sugar Babies on Broadway, formed a theatre company called Victoria Fair. I auditioned and was hired as the youngest member of the company.

Jugglers OIL 30”x15” 1977

Dr. Ralph Allen INK AND WATERCOLOR 16” x 12” 1972

A production of Justice Not Revenge, directed by Dr. Ralph Allen, Victoria Fair Theatre Company, 1971

Ralph, a brash, good-humored, extremely well-educated man, terrified me. He threw me in at the deep end of Shakespeare and the classics by generously giving me strong roles in his productions. Some of them, I feel, were far beyond my age and ability at the time.

After my audition, I remember standing before his desk while he leaned back in his chair and passionately expounded to the ceiling that I must treat every part, no matter how small, as the starring role of the show.

During this lecture, Max, his equally passionate Schnauzer, vigorously embraced my lower leg. I broke out in a sweat. The vice-like grip of canine amour is unshakeable, and there wasn’t a bucket of cold water in sight.

George Bernard Shaw WATERCOLOR 22”x18” 1973

Lady Bracknell WATERCOLOR 24” x 18” 1972-1973

Ralph continued on the importance of concentration.

“It’s all there in the material, Regehr, focus on that. Work with the audience, but don’t let them distract you.”

My concentration was already split between trying to impress Ralph with my mature attitude and the hopeless effort of dislodging the lovesick Max, who was steadily rocking himself into a frenzy. My whole body strained.

After what seemed like an endless sermon of praise to the sacrifices one had to make for a life in the theatre, Ralph brought his speech to a climactic finish. At the same moment, Max went rigid with ecstasy, coughed once, and slid to the floor in a wheezing heap.

Ralph swiveled around to face me, leveling his forefinger like a Colt 45.

“And let nothing,” he fired, “I repeat, nothing, deter you from the path of your career!”

“Yes sir,” I rasped. My throat was dry. “Thank you, sir!”

I quickly headed for the door, dragging my ravished leg behind me.

“Oh, by the way, Regehr ...”

“Sir?”

He knelt down to stroke Max. “You got the job, ya’ know, so don’t be so damn nervous. I want you to concentrate, but I also want you to relax. Like good ol’ Max here,” he laughed, “I hope I make myself clear,”

Upon hearing his name, Max sat up and began eyeballing my other leg with a penetrating look of lust.

“Very clear, sir.” I stumbled out of the room, muttering under my breath, “More than you’ll ever know.”

James Brown OIL 24”x18”

After Holbein OIL 15”x11” 1993

Painting people has always been my strongest interest. Most of my characters are imaginary, but literature, film, music, and theatre have always made an impact. Acting, in particular, has helped to guide my process for developing personalities on canvas.

Nearly all of my early portraits are devoid of background. I wanted nothing to steal focus or upstage my subjects. Eventually, I allowed background to enhance the central image, but even today many of my paintings are not graced with detailed settings.

Discipline was not an issue in the face of a natural drive (which has never left me) to produce work, but with so many activities to attend to, I often wondered if I could do justice to them all. Sometime during the early 1970s, I grasped the concept that creativity was not on a schedule, it was the schedule, and that all my expression came from a single core. I could “speak” in as many different languages as I chose; the “voice” would always be mine.

I began to recognize the importance of life outside of work and to appreciate experiences which at one time I had dismissed as mere distractions. My relationships with women and my adventures through travel account for some of my richest experiences. They have proved to be limitless sources of inspiration; as vital to work as working itself.

Girl in the Park OIL 20”x 16” 1973

I have no idea where the term “falling in love” came from; it may have something to do with swooning. My personal method has been to plunge headlong (and with any luck, buck naked), into the fathomless and dangerous waters of romance.

At fourteen, I breached the virgin shoreline in the arms of an older woman. I think she was all of eighteen. The event itself was so unremarkable that I cannot even remember her name. With apologies to the lady in question, I must confess that it was also the first time I got drunk. I was so ill from over-imbibing that the morning found me literally hung over the cold steel tracks of the Canadian Pacific Railway, surrounded by puddles of liquid pizza. My recovery took four days. Along with my virginity, I am certain that I lost at least half my brain cells. I had to wait another three years before the real tidal wave hit.

I first plunged into the true love of Carole May, a magical girl I had known since childhood. I had been attracted to her free spirit since the age of eleven; at seventeen I was enchanted. She was a dark, beautiful ocean in whose depths I submerged my adolescent passion. I could have drowned in her forever, but the swells of ambition washed me ashore, and love was driven out to sea. We were together almost three years before we parted. In that time we also lost our child, which created a lasting rift of guilt and a bond of sadness between us.

Blood

Opposite the note pad and your broken glass,

A certificate of sacrifice, left behind

To be filed in darkness,

For the child left behind

Knows no memory of its blood,

But our crumpled severance list,

Now lying in stiffened pools of wax,

It reminds forever.

I rearrange the news clippings

And align your strangled hairbrush

Overgrown with dead split ends,

And set the drained bottle

Beside the ashtray brimming

With your cremations, embossed

With your red kisses, my orchestration

Embalmed with your fallen smoke, I breathe

And once more search the glass we shared

For your fingerprints over mine,

To sense again, any spare element of union

That might speak to me of genesis.

But there is no redemption in these vestiges

No blood to trace amongst these empty shards,

For grief decants only ritual,

And seance only conjures the lost.

-DR

Pocket (LINE DRAWING SERIES) PEN AND INK 141½”x11½”

As Stu in Sam Shepard’s Chicago,Vancouver City Stage, Fall 1973, post pneumonia

Lack of funds, losing the child, and my career obsessions ultimately sank the relationship. I have often looked back with regret, but also with gratitude for the memory of a passion which over the years has frequently been the stimulating force behind a number of paintings.

My subsequent philandering was both a misguided quest to rediscover the romance of that relationship and a vain attempt to forget the unhappiness of its demise. The following years in Vancouver were wild ones.

By the spring of 1973, after performing and rehearsing as many as four different stage productions at once, recording radio plays in the morning, partying at night, plunging into various female oceans, and painting — often on no sleep at all — my health and my work fell apart. I came down with pneumonia.

It seems an obvious revelation, but during a bout of delirium it occurred to me that if I nurtured my physical self, I could work with greater vitality. I decided that I needed a long life in order to produce all the ideas that glowed beneath the surface of my fevered carcass.

Decadent OIL 24”x18” 1977

Old Boxer WATERCOLOR 28”x17” 19f

I rose up from the cold coals of pneumonia a very determined phoenix. Having already set the precedent for the scope of productivity I relished, I set about amending my life by eliminating the parties and at least fifty percent of the oceanic skinny-dipping. I then introduced a vigorous two hour workout that continues as a compulsory daily regimen and an important cornerstone to the focus and energy behind my work.

I was later to add amateur boxing to my list of physical endeavors. I had always abhorred team sports, preferring the one-on-one (and in this case, the toe-to-toe), as a greater personal challenge. I felt a need to grapple with dangerous forces. After some fifty-odd fights, most of them unofficial, I came to the conclusion that my greatest adversary was me. To engage that force did not require the conscious infliction of violence upon others, but a cross-examination of internal objectives. My devil’s advocate, or doppelganger, has been my worst enemy, for he strikes from ambush, desecrating purpose, creativity, and ego.

EGON SCHIELE Squatting Woman 17/100 DRYPOINT 1914

Park Fool WATERCOLOR 17”x13” 1973

Waiting for Oskar OIL 30”x24” 1990

Along with my decision to improve myself physically, I resolved to extend my knowledge of art history and to study specific artists, both past and present.

I developed a strong interest in several areas of 19th and 20th century art, most notably Expressionism and Romanticism; with a proclivity for the Pre-Raphaelites and the Secession group of Austrian artists: Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Oskar Kokoschka. I have also admired the contemporary work of Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, and the late Francis Bacon.

Emulating the individual styles of painters has never interested me. There are innumerable forces which incline creativity. I suspect the impact of other artists’ work upon my own to be very slight.

My studies have given me to understand that the strongest influences are usually hidden from the artist but I doubt if this is true of myself