AutoBiography Peter F. Lanouette
	I drew and painted as a child. At first, art helped me elude a bullying brother, but soon it showed me I could express a freedom of self. Hungrily, I drew and dabbed paint as self- expression. Most experiences and feelings could not be articulated in any other way. In grade school, drawing helped me to combat boredom. While taking notes for class, I would become lost in the doodles that burst from my pen. Though an underachiever, I was very fortunate in high school to have a teacher who encouraged me to paint. After that, art school seemed inevitable, and I entered Silvermine College of Art in New Canan, CT in 1965. At that time, Silvermine was administered by artists who had been trained by Josef Albers at Yale, and his powers dominated my approach. In my first year, Dean Robert Gray stood me before VanGogh's "The Night Cafe" at The Yale Museum of Fine Art. That view reaffirmed a world I had been glimpsing in my own work. I entered VanGogh's painting and knew the truth and beauty of its creativity. Since that day, I have drawn and painted with an intensity that empowers each new day. When concentrating on large drawings in pencil or black poster paint (during and after my last year at school), my tutor was Arnold Bittleman. These drawings were first shown at the Newport Art Museum in 1973. Following this show, a patron supported my landscapes and portraits which allowed me to perfect a realistic representation of the world around me. For eleven years, I painted houses, working every summer and collecting unemployment every winter. Thus in winter, I painted constantly and productively. My oils, watercolors, and drawings found buyers at shows in unused retail space. For two and a half years, I painted hulls in a shipyard. The dichotomy of the ocean's beauty and the coastline's craggy features clashed with the barren, raw industrial force of shipyard hardware. As always, my surroundings were caught by my work, shifting from straight visual representation to an exploration of the essence of all experience. Color expanded to encompass emotions. For nearly two years, I was a house-husband, snatching moments through the day to splash watercolors and sumi ink drawings. I treasured these works for their rapidity and directness. To pay the rent, I later drove taxicabs at night. The long idle hours were ideal for drawing the street scenes. I filled sketchbooks and honed my visual shorthand. Then I became Artist-in-Residence at my son's grade school. Five years of volunteer work there filled the school hallways, my private gallery! That rich learning experience, learning from my students, echoed the lessons learned at Silvermine. Teacher and student struggle together in search of truth and beauty. For the past eighteen years I have worked as a taxi dispatcher. Never wanting to force my art to support me, I endure the forty-hour week to have the rest of the time for the studio. Of late, a continuing exhibition at Miller Enterprises in Newport includes a dozen paintings. My Four-Way paintings sprung from drawing sessions on the roof of my studio. Now I could encompass the entire horizon. By contrast, my interior paintings continue the steady breakdown of conventional western picture planes. These paintings were first shown at DuBlois Gallery in Newport in November 1997. The Yardman appeared in a series of forty oils completed between 1977 and 1985. He caught me by surprise, and he enchanted those who saw ten of his pictures at AS220 in Providence during May and June of 1999. A two-man show with sculptor Michael Brennan was held in their large gallery from March 14 to April 15, 2000. I am a hard-working, passionate man. I began my painting career because it addressed unanswerable, infinite questions about our human existence. I am an artist, and, while struggling constantly with family finances, I still continue to draw and paint. I'm pleased to be leaving the visual trail of an emerging human. Over the years I have sold thousands of paintings and drawings...works that reflect my soul's searching the world for beauty. I am grateful that people respond to, and want, these works as a part of their lives. My life has embraced the visual arts since I first stared at "The Night Cafe." Since then, I have looked at a million paintings, and I know great art when I see it. Occassionally, I make great art. Peter F. Lanouette.