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Art passes to good hands
By GWENDOLYN DRISCOLL
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SAN CLEMENTE – He used a palette knife for maximum control. His tan fingers would grip the smooth handle; his arm would lift and – carefully – scrape it across the canvas.

The spatulalike tool left behind precise horizontal bars of color – blue and green were favorites – that were a signature of Jerry Schoenfeld's paintings.


In August the trim 53-year-old felt a strange sensation in his left leg – a heaviness and a tendency for his foot to drop unexpectedly when he lifted it.

Within weeks a terrible diagnosis came back: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease.

The incurable neurological disease can kill within three years. Before, the body rapidly declines and goes into paralysis, even as the mind, prisonerlike, remains alert and intact.

By November the retired Navy captain-turned-artist needed a cane to walk. In February, he switched to a walker. By June, his left hand could no longer hold a paint brush.

"It was a complete shock," Schoenfeld says of his diagnosis. "It came out of nowhere."

The disease spelled the premature end of the artistic career Schoenfeld had waited all his life to begin.

Then his 13-year-old daughter, Ashley, had an idea.

That idea may be Jerry Schoenfeld's last chance to fulfill his artistic dreams.

• • •

Those dreams began in Cincinnati, where Schoenfeld spent his childhood drawing and doodling. He has known he loved art "since forever," he says.

"It's almost an itch you have to scratch," Schoenfeld says of painting. "You get a lot of satisfaction out of it. … It's a release."

He graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in fine arts and placed paintings in galleries and competitions. But Schoenfeld was also the product of a military family – four members of his immediate family, including his mother, a World War II Wac, served in the armed forces.

Schoenfeld spent the next 25 years as a Navy officer, serving on a destroyer in the Persian Gulf during the Gulf War and finishing his career as the executive officer at Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station in 2005.

The rigidity of military life did not sink his artistic desires and, to a certain degree, fostered them. Schoenfeld's more recent work, abstract stripes of aquamarine color, "evoke the ocean," he says. "They are about a seascape."

The work was good enough to be exhibited at local restaurants and the San Clemente Art Association.

"I've sold – not enough to make a living – but to know people like it," Schoenfeld says.

In June, Schoenfeld licensed two paintings with Prestige Arts, a Laguna Niguel-based fine art reproduction service that will sell copies to dealers nationwide.

His big break came even as his body was breaking.

This spring, Schoenfeld switched from a walker to a wheelchair because, he says, "It got to a point when I couldn't get out of a chair without help," he says.

His doctor thought the disease might be linked to his military service. Preliminary research in the science journal Neurology found that Gulf War vets developed Lou Gehrig's disease at as much as twice the rate of veterans who were not deployed.

Although the research found the higher rates in only Air Force and Army veterans, Schoenfeld thinks the multiple vaccines given to all military personnel for ailments such as anthrax might be a factor.

There is no definitive research to prove his suspicions. "It's just my opinion," Schoenfeld says.

What was clear was that Schoenfeld has very little time left.

It was the reason Schoenfeld and his wife, Virginia, decided to tell Ashley and their other child, Johann, 11, immediately after the diagnosis.

The conversation occurred at dinner and "was not good," Schoenfeld says.

But it prompted an offer soon after from Ashley.

"When it's summertime and I'm off from school, I'd like to help," Ashley said.

Ashley, in effect, volunteered to become her father's "arms" by painting according to his instructions.

Schoenfeld knew his daughter was a talented doodler of black-and-white cartoons. But could she master the bright colors and careful geometry of his abstract style?

In the family's garage this summer, that question is slowly being answered.

On a recent Friday, Ashley smeared a vertical line of sea-blue acrylic paint across a large canvas with a palette knife while her dad looked on from his wheelchair. "Add a little more white?" Ashley says.

Schoenfeld paused to contemplate the canvas. "See that thick ridge?" he says. "You may want to flatten it out a bit just so it doesn't get in the way later."

Carefully Ashley smoothed the paint. "Good," her father says.

"I think it's good with the purple shining through," she says. "It's, like, luminous."

Translating the internal, intuitive process of a painter into verbal instructions has been "a little tough," Schoenfeld says. "But she picks it up quickly."

The father-daughter team works several hours a day. The result so far is four completed paintings that appear to be relatively faithful to the works Schoenfeld created before his diagnosis.

"As we go along, it's going to be more her arm," Schoenfeld says. "And it's going to get more collaborative 'cause she's got a lot of cool ideas."

Ashley, an incoming freshman at San Clemente High School who loves art and science, says she has learned about color and technique from her father.

"He taught me how colors come together real nice," she says.

Plus, she adds, "I love him – a lot."

•

The duo hopes to finish at least 16 paintings by the end of summer – enough to enter in an art show, or perhaps sell to Prestige.

"I'd like to make a profit out of them," Ashley says. "It will tell me people like them, and I'll feel proud."

For both, however, the joint-painting exercise is less about money than quality time.

"This summer is going to be most of the time we have to really get stuff done 'cause she's going into high school, and she's going to be a pretty busy girl," Schoenfeld says.

He also knows he may not be able to talk much longer.

"I know my situation is deteriorating day by day," he says.

The family hopes a cure will be found or that Schoenfeld will join the small percentage of victims whose disease "burns out."

"You don't give up hope," Schoenfeld says. "You may as well just drop dead."

Until that time, "It gives us a chance to spend some time together rather than just sitting in front of a TV," Schoenfeld says. "I hope she enjoys it. I know I do."


Contact the writer: 714-704-3705 or gdriscoll@ocregister.com
http://www.ocregister.com/news/schoe...ease-paintings