DESCRIPTION OF WORK

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“I’m an oil painter in watercolors,” says Todd Stone, who works in both media and whose recent series have featured garden scenes, pools of water and (sometimes empty) bathtubs. He draws inspiration for his landscapes from traversing the area surrounding the country home he and his wife, Lori, own in eastern Pennsylvania’s Bucks County—a practice that sometimes finds him standing knee-deep in the Delaware River.

His cityscapes often depict the view from his studio in lower Manhattan. At 8:45 on the morning of September 11, 2001, Stone was standing at his window, six blocks from the World Trade Center, when the first jet pierced the North Tower. Later that morning, camera at his eye, he watched from a nearby rooftop as the South Tower collapsed. He spent the rest of the day photographing and drawing, and from these images he produced 18 watercolors, at times mixing into the paint some of the thick dust that settled in his studio when the Towers fell. The result is a collection he titled the “Witness” series.

METHOD OF WORK

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Stone begins his compositions by drawing while within the landscape—“a very basic eye-hand practice,” he says. These sketches provide the mental image upon which he ultimately bases his paintings. “I paint what I freeze in my brain,” he says. “The watercolor might not be exactly what I was looking at, but rather the image that was created in my brain and from the act of drawing.” Often, the watercolors serve as “a jumping-off place” for Stone’s oil paintings. “Oil painting is a more contemplative practice,” he explains. “You have a different emotional range because of the physicality of the paint. There’s a body to the oil paintings, which adds a certain gravitas that is difficult to attain in watercolors—but I try to do it.”

FAVORITE SUBJECT MATTER

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“I paint what it is like to be Todd Stone in this world,” the artist says. “It’s my leap of faith that if [the subject] resonates with me, and it’s important enough to catch my eye and demand of my time to make the painting, then there’s something there that resonates with the viewer. I make conscious decisions to make it ‘smaller’: to paint myself in the tub rather than myself on a mountaintop, to paint my studio, my wife, my dog.”

FIRST ARTISTIC IMPRESSION

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As a child, art was not a part of Stone’s world. “I didn’t know you could be an artist,” he says.  It wasn’t until Stone enrolled at Wesleyan University in Connecticut as a religion major that he began to draw—mostly religious imagery.

MOST INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS

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Although Stone says that Mark Rothko “made me want to be a painter,” it was Larry Calcagno (1913–93), an abstract-expressionist landscape painter, who left a dominant impression. Stone met Calcagno after he graduated from the University of New Mexico, and Calcagno became something of a mentor in Stone’s life as well as in his art.

Stone rented one of his first Manhattan studios—a $125-a-month Bowery loft—from Calcagno, and whenever his friend visited the city, Stone allowed him to use the space. Calcagno reciprocated by giving Stone access to his New Mexico studio. “He did it out of generosity, not to make money,” Stone says. “He liked helping young artists.” A native San Franciscan, Calcagno traveled the world, cultivating a coterie of patrons “who loved him and loved his work,” Stone says. “I was always impressed by his independence and his ability to survive outside the New York City art scene. He was a role model of taking responsibility for yourself as an artist, for leading your life as an artist.”

BIGGEST BREAK

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In 1976 the National Endowment for the Arts awarded Stone a grant, which allowed him to establish a body of work.

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE "EMERGING"

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“I’m constantly emerging,” says Stone, who has made a living in the New York art world for three decades. “I’ve been an emerging artist for 30 years. It’s better than a submerging artist. It really is true that you are always an ‘emerging’ artist. I’m reading a book now called Old Masters: Great Artists in Old Age.

It’s about these painters in their 90s, and they’re hitting their stride—they’re begging for another week of life: ‘Just give me another week, I know I can get this right.’ It’s amazing. And they consider themselves emerging artists, like they’re just starting to get there, they’re just starting to learn what this stuff’s about. That’s what keeps you pumped, that idea that you are emerging. I want to get better. And painting is one of those great things where you can. You can hit your stride at 85.”

ONE EXPERT'S OPINION

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“Watercolor is a tough medium to work and a tough medium to get accepted as serious,” says Gene Cooper, professor emeritus of American Art History at the University of California at Long Beach. “Yet Todd has managed to overcome a lot of watercolor’s negative baggage as a medium that genteel women learn how to use in the salon.”

AWARDS

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Besides the NEA grant, Stone received a travel grant from the John Anson Kittredge Educational Fund in 2004, which, along with the Puffin Foundation, supported his participation in the Biennale Internazionale dell’Arte Contemporanea di Firenze, where he exhibited his “Witness” series.