![\"Milford](\"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2018\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2018\/05\/zornes-1.jpg\")
<\/div>\nZornes pulled out a 44- x 35-foot piece of watercolor paper, soaked it in his bathtub, rolled it onto an aluminum backing and painted the marvelous land-scape over just three days. It depicts the coast from Northern California down to the Mexico border.<\/p>\n
A Pasadena physician spotted the work during a Utah exhibition and paid Zornes $35,000 for it, a modest sum by today\u2019s standards. He had planned to hang the work in a medical clinic, however its size apparently was too imposing. The physician instead donated it to Harvey Mudd College, where it has hung in the college\u2019s Platt Campus Center for a number of years.
\nAnd what of Zornes, who stopped by HMC in October? As he approaches 100, the iconoclastic artist continues to paint, despite failing vision and other encumbrances of advancing age.<\/p>\n
His lore began in 1908 when Zornes was born in Camargo, Okla., the son of a cowboy and a prairie schoolteacher. To keep their young boy occupied, Zornes\u2019 parents introduced him to art.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother set me to drawing to keep me out of mischief,\u201d said Zornes. \u201cI always looked forward to Christmas, when I got watercolor boxes and pads of paper.\u201d<\/p>\n
He quickly flourished, so much that by early in the Depression he was earning a fair living sketching people for small change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found to my advantage that I could draw pictures of people\u2019s kids, dogs or houses and get a little money for my work,\u201d he said. \u201cI could always talk people into buying something from me. It became a survival device, and I\u2019ve kept on surviving throughout my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Early on, Zornes, who studied at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and Pomona College, gave equal attention to oils and watercolors. However, he tilted toward watercolor for practical reasons: because it was lighter, an artist could carry much more paper than canvas. Additionally, watercolors dried more quickly than oils, enabling artists to more easily transport them. And, paper was cheaper than canvas.<\/p>\n
Success came quickly for the young watercolorist, who sold his first painting in the early 1930s and hasn\u2019t looked back\u2014until recently, when time began to nip at his heels.
\nStill, he paints\u2014despite the near-complete numbness in his brush hand, the waning vision that forces him to work with eyes trained just inches from a canvas, and a gait that requires he spend more time than he wishes shuffling back and forth between palette and canvas in his Claremont studio.<\/p>\n
![\"Milford](\"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2018\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2018\/05\/zornes-2.jpg\")
<\/div>\n\u201cHe paints every day,\u201d said his wife of 63 years, Patricia, a former art student of his.<\/p>\n
In fact, in January, Zornes celebrated his 97th birthday by presenting an exhibit at Pitzer College, where he once taught. The exhibit featured 30 watercolors\u2014all of them completed after his 90th birthday.<\/p>\n
Not bad for the last great early California abstract realist, one of 12 watercolorists credited with elevating their medium beyond sketch to a legitimate art form during the 1930s and 1940s. The group included famed watercolorist Millard Sheets (1907-1989), who, during the 1920s, influenced Zornes to make art his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI learned (from him) that all you need to do is go out, look at the world around you and paint.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zornes still paints professionally as he has since the Franklin Roosevelt Administration. In fact, it was Roosevelt who hand-picked one of Zornes\u2019 paintings to hang in the White House. The selection transformed Zornes from a regional artist to one of national stature.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou get a few kudos like that and you begin to get a reputation,\u201d said Zornes, who has authored two books on his work. \u201cI\u2019ve had the good fortune, through persistent work, to gradually get the kudos that are necessary to become identified. Eventually, after long practice, you develop a following and your work becomes collectible.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the ensuing years he also served as one of 42 artists chosen by the War Department to chronicle World War II through their paintings. Some of Zornes\u2019 work is still archived somewhere in the Pentagon. In addition to the White House, his work hangs in the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
\nAs impressive as the mural in Platt is, one Zornes painted in 1936 is just as impressive. The work, which scrolls across the top of four walls inside the Claremont Post Office, gives a sistinal view of the artist\u2019s community as seen from the building when orange groves dotted the landscape.<\/p>\n
Certainly, the pace has slowed since those early days. Zornes recently decided to curtail his busy workshop and lecture schedule, which for years kept him traveling from country to country. Finally, as he nears 100, he\u2019s content to live off the income derived from his paintings.<\/p>\n
These days, there are many paintings. In fact, a rumpled stack nearly a foot thick graces a rear corner of his studio, some awaiting completion, all needing frames\u2014unlike other artists, Zornes prefers to do the framing himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a perfectionist,\u201d said Walter Ebrahimzadeh, whose Artist Trait gallery in downtown Claremont carries Zornes\u2019 work. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t sign a painting until it\u2019s complete. He\u2019s got paintings he began 50 years ago that he still isn\u2019t satisfied with.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a man his age, he paints voraciously, though he\u2019s no longer able to read without a projector. He paints larger than ever because his eyes no longer permit him to work on smaller projects. And, he paints in a style that diminishing eyesight due to macular degeneration has forced to evolve, with bolder colors, deeper lines, greater contrast and less detail. On the bright side, his mind, imagination and work ethic remain intact.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to paint in sharper contrast in order to see what I\u2019m doing at all,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd, I must have a greater definition of line in order to see the lines. I am influenced by my failure to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
In earlier days he traveled the globe\u2014painting, teaching and lecturing. More recently, his travels have taken him from doctor to doctor around the country in search of a way to slow his vision loss. Nothing has worked.<\/p>\n
![\"Zornes'](\"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2018\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2018\/05\/zornes-3.jpg\")
<\/div>\n\u201cI suppose I\u2019m facing the time when I won\u2019t be able to draw and paint,\u201d said the one-time aspiring journalist. \u201cI suppose I\u2019ll get to the point when I can\u2019t see, but I\u2019m a thoughtful person and I\u2019ll just find some way to develop writing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, as time passes it takes its toll\u2014even on artists.<\/p>\n
\u201cWrestling with binoculars, painting on location, coming back here and having to get the lighting right\u2014it seems to take an awful lot of energy,\u201d he said. \u201cPainting was easy when I was young and strong. Now, it\u2019s hard work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the constraints, Zornes insists he\u2019s as good an artist as ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, I\u2019m a better painter. I find it harder to execute my skills, but as far as creativity and the ability to design go, I\u2019m a better painter than I\u2019ve ever been.\u201d<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note: Milford Zornes passed away at the age of 100 on Feb. 24, 2008.<\/p>\n