Featured Artists: Richard Mortemore & Gail Griffin
Featured Cover Artist: Richard Mortemore
Richard Mortemore, better known as “Dick”, was born and raised in Lambertville, Michigan where he remembers running around barefoot and exploring the farmlands and surrounding woods and streams. This is where his fondness and fascination for wildlife and plants of all kinds developed and his favorite teacher, who recognized his budding ability, encouraged his drawings and paintings of them. She left a ream of paper on his desk and kept encouraging him to continue drawing throughout his time in her class. At home, he remembers looking through his grandmother’s book titled Birds of America, illustrated by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, whom he admired and whose style he practiced and aspired to copy.
Dick saved money from a paper route and enrolled in a correspondence course in taxidermy so he could learn about the anatomy of animals. That knowledge, he believes, helped him to understand how to capture his subjects on paper using the medium of acrylic paint. Dick explains, “I threw all my watercolor paint away when I discovered that I could use acrylic like watercolor, and it is much easier to use. I choose arches rag paper because I like the way it takes the paint and it really helps me to show others how I view my world.”
In April 1968, after working seven years at Kensington Metropolitan Park, which is 4300 acres of recreation area that included a Nature Center where Dick was the head park naturalist, he and his wife Judy decided to move with their three children to a warmer climate. Upon arriving in Hawai‘i, Dick got a job teaching Hawaiian history at Hilo Intermediate School. He credits the Hawai‘i Public Library for helping him through his “crash course” education and thus began his love affair with the Hawaiian Islands. The Mortemores’ fourth child was born in Laupahoehoe, where they later settled. Soon thereafter, Laupahoehoe Graphics was created.
Through the years, Dick has shared what he learned by building trails at “Hawai‘i 2000”; teaching Environmental Education at Hawai‘i Community College; working with the Youth Conservation Corps by maintaining Pu‘honua o Honaunau; on Mauna Kea, cleaning and maintaining the trails and plants at Pu‘u Huluhulu; and teaching at the Department of Education’s Keakealani Outdoor Education Center, where he worked closely with the Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park to provide curriculum for Hawai‘i Island 6th graders to learn volcanology. Finally, as the director of the Panaewa Rainforest Zoo, his daily walks through the zoo inspired more paintings.
It isn’t necessarily a lightning bolt that creates inspiration for a painting. Dick’s mother-in-law complained that he hadn’t painted a wreath and she wanted one for her yearly Christmas card. She passed away suddenly and didn’t get the card printed then, but did get to see the painting. He refers to the cover painting as Granny’s Wreath, and after that painted a series of wreaths, which are available as notecards.
Dick still paints daily, with no sign of slowing down. He also enjoys sitting in his backyard and watching his pigeons fly. He and his wife of 20 years, Avis, plan to keep traveling and continue sharing paintings that show Dick Mortemore’s world. For more information: facebook.com/laupahoehoegraphics.
Table of Contents Artist: Gail Griffin
Gail Griffin thinks everyone has a talent. She thanks the Great Spirit every day that oil painting was hers; it allows her to be able to express the events that shape our world. Gail painted in the turbulent times of the Hawaiian renaissance of the 1980s, her works reflecting the spirit and death of George Helm and Auntie Emma DeFries. Her paintings hang at the US Center for Military History in Washington DC, Anderson Cooper’s office, CNN headquarters in New York, Anita Hill’s office at Brandeis University, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, and now at the Paniolo Heritage Museum in Waimea. Gail displays and sells her art at One Gallery in Hilo.
For more information: gailgriffin.net.
