Peter Gordon Strickman

Peter Gordon Strickman, son of the late Marjorie and Leo Strickman, formerly of Fall River, MA, died on January 26, 2017 at Charlton Hospital in Fall River where he was born 70 years ago. He had lived in Boston for more than 30 years. The cause of death was pneumonia and many complications.

Pete attended public schools in Fall River, but skipped his senior year at Durfee High and went instead to Marlboro College in the beautiful mountains of southern Vermont where he graduated with highest honors. It is there that he further developed his talent as a painter. Artist, Wolf Kahn, was Pete’s ‘outside examiner’ for college graduation and said of his work: “One feels in these works a gentle, slightly ironic, affectionate and generous personality; it is this quality which gives the pictures their charm and interest. He responds to the personality of sitters in portraits or the moods of nature in landscape with equal spontaneity.” Pete later described himself as a “river artist”- his favorite locales being the Sakonnet, Taunton and Westport rivers. He had several shows at galleries and museums in Providence, Newport and New York City.

Pete was a brilliant, well-read, well-informed scholar, not only of religions and cultures, but of many fields of study. He had been a scientist, a mathematician and a musician; he was a poet and a wonderful story teller; he was a mystic with a deeply evolved inner life. Several years ago, he found his home with the Roman Catholic church and he experienced great comfort, joy, and solace being an active member of the Paulist Center and community where he lived on Beacon Hill in Boston.

Pete was a loyal and devoted friend. He was kind, gentle and compassionate, and had a genuinely warm and caring spirit. He was without guile. He will be painfully missed by the many people whose lives he deeply affected, especially his sister Bonnie and his "adopted sister" Janie, along with many cousins and hundreds of friends who will cherish him and his memory forever.

His Memorial Service will be held on Saturday, February 11, 2017 at 10:30AM at the Paulist Center, 5 Park Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02114. Kindly omit flowers, contributions in his honor may be made to a charity of one's choice. Burial private.

When I was a youngster, I drew many pictures - my favorite subject was skyscrapers. In my early teens, a wonderful artist in my home town, Barbara Alpert, invited me to join her housewives’ drawing group. She gave me a wonderful foundation in drawing, which prepared me perfectly for a college major in oil painting.

I studied at a very small college in the beautiful low mountains of southern Vermont. I was taught by a very fine master artist from the New York art world, Frank Stout. It was there i fell in love with painting landscape from nature in the open air.

Early in Frank’s superlative education in painting, he made a prediction, telling me I would leave the world in my thirties, and imploring me to leave something behind for the world before leaving the world behind. I never forgot his advice and followed it.

Frank gave me a straight “A” for my graduation grade, and Wolf Kahn, a famous New York painter Frank invited to evaluate my work for graduation as an outside examiner, also gave me a straight “A”. Those grades were all that counted for my graduation grade.

In his commencement address, the president of the college spoke at length of me. At the end of the ceremony, a woman came up to me and offered me my first professional non-college solo show at her gallery in a village nearby. It was a success. and on the proceeds from it, I toured Canada and the U.S. Then I returned to Vermont and lived and painted in the woods.

After a while, I returned to my hometown in Southeastern Massachusetts, Fall River, and continued working. I would get up at three or four in the morning, meditate for a while, and drive to my very large studio downtown. I would prepare my materials, pack them into my little truck, and drive out to the beautiful countryside surrounding the city. I would set up and start painting just after sunrise.

I also painted in my studio, in every major genre: still lifes, nudes from life, portraits and abstractions. I was given many shows in Fall River and surrounding cities, and sold a number of paintings. I was often written up in local papers.

Fulfilling my teacher’s wishes, I left a great deal of work behind me. I retired to deep visionary spiritual life in my early thirties, just as Frank had predicted. That was the end of my professional work, though later I did a great number of post-professional ink paintings in the East Asian fashion.

For years after I stopped painting in oils, I was given show after show without my even asking, the show being put together by others without my having to do anything at all. Sadly, in my thirties, a large amount of my fine work done previously was destroyed, but a large amount of paintings survive. My younger sister, a fine artist in her own right, a successful jazz singer in New York for many years, has put together a large collection of my finest work, and it is through her efforts that this photo catalog was put together and on her request, this bio.