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 Gene
Speck began to paint in his 30's and
it wasn't until then that he
realized why he had felt so
unfulfilled before. A South
Dakota native who grew up in
California, Speck preferred drawing
to doing math as a boy, but he had
never actually seen anybody
paint. He took a course at the
College of Arts in Berkeley as a
young man, and although he had no
other formal training, decided to
pick up a brush - and was astounded
at the results. His paintings
were shown in San Francisco, Carmel
and New York City.
Gene
Speck by his own admission is "an
extremely private person". He
lives on a modest ranch out West, which
provides the privacy he craves and it
offers him a chance to turn back the
clock as well. The past,
specifically the period when the West
was slowly being settled, lives on in
Speck's highly detailed and naturalistic
paintings. A favorite subject
matter, the American past has a special
appeal for him.
Humble
and shy, Speck wants nothing more than
to be left alone to paint. His
painting is his life and today, after
more than 20 years of working with color
and light, pigment and paint, brush and
canvas, he says everything else in life
is secondary to his painting.
Although
he downplays his accomplishments, Speck
is a self taught painter who learned
everything he knows about composition
and technique through trial and error
and does not wish to do anything else
but paint. "I hope when I die
I go with a brush in my hand."
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