Back to the drawing board

 

 

By Stewart Oksenhorn
Aspen Times Staff Writer
November 21, 2003

Dave Notor’s mountainside house past Aspen’s East End leaves little doubt that an artist lives there. The walls are filled with Notor’s pastel and watercolor landscapes, as well as a handful of his black-and-white photographs. There are books on painters and painting techniques stacked here and there.

One end of a small bedroom has been made into a studio, with pastel, easels and various works-in-progress: sketches, landscapes and even Notor’s first attempt at a self-portrait. Another bedroom is devoted to the part-time occupation of Notor’s wife’s, Carolee Murray — matting and framing her husband’s work.

It gives the impression of an entrenched artist and, indeed, the 48-year-old Notor is devoted to his painting. Ask him if he paints every day, and he gives an assured “Oh yeah!” Notor describes himself as being on a mission to create, and his output backs the claim. Notor has completed some 30 to 40 paintings over the last five months, and he is making certain the work is getting out in the world. Notor is part of a three-person show, with fellow local painters Mike Farmer and Claire Richelme, at the Red Brick Center for the Arts that has an opening reception Tuesday, Nov. 25, from 5-7 p.m. He has a piece in the Aspen Art Museum’s current Roaring Fork Open exhibit. And beginning this week, his work will be at the Aspen Artists Co-op at Aspen Highlands Village.

But while it is true that Notor’s artistic tendencies have been present for a long time, Notor’s current state of productivity is deceptive. Go back a year and a half, and there were no painting books or easels or canvases evident in the Notor-Murray household. Notor, who had studied mostly commercial art at the Colorado Institute of Art in the late ’70s, had long ago given up art, frustrated at the commercial direction in which he was heading. For more than two decades, Notor limited his artistic ambition to the occasional sketch and pen-and-ink Christmas card, as he jumped from such jobs as Kansas oil field worker to Carbondale meat-cutter to his current position as owner of Notoriety Hot Tub Service.

When Murray began seeing Notor six years ago, she knew he had been an artist, but had scarcely seen him paint. But she had seen hints of talent in his past work. Wanting to nudge his creativity, Murray brought Notor to Santa Fe in June 2002, hoping something would click. It did.

“I dragged him to Santa Fe,” said Murray, a real estate agent when not matting and framing her husband’s art. “We started at the bottom of Canyon Road” — Santa Fe’s famous stretch of art galleries — “got one-third of the way up one side of the road and he sees Albert Handell’s landscape work. And he went berserk: ‘Oh, I want to do this. I can do this.’”

The Canyon Road tour ended there. After surveying Handell’s landscapes, Notor went across the street to an art supply store, spent a few hundred dollars and hurried back to his hotel room. He started painting immediately, and hasn’t stopped. Back home in Aspen, Notor set up a studio in his garage, and worked his way to the sun-filled end of a bedroom where he now spends most every morning, when the light is most intense. Since his Santa Fe epiphany, Notor has completed some 100 paintings.

“I’m on a mission to paint ’til I’m blue in the face,” said Notor.

The move to the mandolin

Growing up in Cleveland, Notor showed early talent as a visual artist. As a high school student, a teacher recognized his abilities and set him up in a college intern program.

But, perhaps because he got little encouragement from his parents, something wasn’t quite clicking. “I wasn’t finding it,” said Notor. He moved to the Roaring Fork Valley in 1975 to be a ski bum, and didn’t enroll in the Colorado Institute of Art, on the Front Range, until 1978. There he studied business-oriented art — illustration, logos, design. Uninspired, he left school without a degree.

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