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Better late than never talented

A Weeki Wachee man realizes his artistic skills and embarks on a new career selling his pieces.

By BETH N. GRAY
Published December 20, 2006

Craig Alan remembers beelining to the back of the five-and-dime when he was about 5.

The glue-together models - airplanes, boats, automobiles - were always on the back wall of the store, and most cost 25 cents, he recalls.

He loved them.

Alan has snapped, glued, decaled and painted them for most of the ensuing 40-some years. And last year, he discovered something else - he could really paint.

"I'm very creative. I'm good with my hands," the nouveau artist said from his studio near Weeki Wachee. While still toying with plastic models as an adult, he had done cabinetry work, ornamental welding and constructed aquariums.

The painting thing came about after Alan was walking the aisles of Howard's Flea Market on U.S. 19 in Homosassa Springs one day last year.

"I said, 'Hey, God, you got any uses for my creativity?'

"In my sleep, I started seeing these paintings, beautiful paintings in my dreams. I got some paints and cheap oil board. I had some plywood laying around the house."

His new avocation was launched and quickly turned into a career. This year, he has sold 135 acrylic and oil paintings at the flea market, where the idea germinated. Works range from $75 to $650.

Flea market art sounds unusual. But Alan's work is a shopper-stopper. He chose the venue for the crowd it generates.

"You hang in an exhibit, and only a few people see it," he said.

Alan's subjects are another reason to pause. They are nautical scenes, past and present: ships and boats, fishing villages, docks and piers - of New England.

Although his parents were New Englanders, he is a native Floridian. How the Northeast seascapes appeared in his dreams, Alan has no idea.

Then there's the Alaskan fishing village scene as well as the Mediterranean seascape with mountains backing the village shore, awash in colorful flowers. Alan has never been to either of those spots.

Alan's choice of medium is somewhat unusual. He prefers plywood because the wood grain adds texture to the work.

"It is difficult to paint on, so it's difficult to copy," he said.

If that sounds a bit paranoid, so be it. Alan admits to being somewhat of a recluse. He won't say exactly where he lives, give the location of his studio or tell his age, other than to say he is in his 40s. He claims to be close to the vest but can talk a blue streak about his work.

Some of that work ranges beyond the paintings. He builds his own frames and paints them to augment but not overpower the subjects, most frames resembling salt-worn or old barn wood.

He said he's heard passers-by with New England accents remark, "Oh, look, he's used old barn wood."

Among those who didn't just pass by are Howard and Jean Couch of Brooksville.

"We're both interested in the sea and nautical stuff," said Howard Couch, 74. "I'm a boat nut."

Seeing Alan's work, Couch, a sea dog for years and current owner of a pontoon boat on the gulf, said, "He's got a New England flair for seascapes and such. He's pretty clever."

The Couches commissioned Alan to paint them a nautical scene, 4 feet by 8 feet, that now hangs in their den.

They also bought an Alan painting of a lighthouse, the blue hues of which match their bathroom. It's an 18-inch octagonally framed work.

Marvel Atkinson of Spring Hill bought a similar work, similarly framed - but only after some finagling. Another customer had the original artwork in hand but wasn't sure it would fit in the space she had.

Atkinson asked the buyer to let her know if it didn't fit, and she would buy it from her. The woman called and said it fit the spot she had for it.

So Atkinson commissioned a replica of the seascape with boats in the foreground, a boathouse, seagulls, a lighthouse in the background.

"I love the painting," said Atkinson, a snowbird who grew up and resides during the summertime near the Atlantic Ocean in Neptune, N.J. "I am partial to the seashore and the water, and I love the scene in the painting. It looks like a place you'd just like to park yourself on a bench and look."

The octagon shapes of Atkinson's purchase and one of the Couches' testifies to the painter's sometimes unconventional bent.

Of the framing, Alan explained, "I just look at a piece of wood and see what I can make out of it."

He also takes into consideration whether the finished product will fit into his aging Mercury Marquis to carry it to the flea market.

In less than a year, Alan has leaped from air-brushing models to deftly handling fan brushes and inch-wide brushes and palate knives to mix and apply colors to plywood and canvass.

"I wish I'd found out I had this talent 20 years ago," he said.

"He's a blossoming artist," said Kenneth Moore of Spring Hill, who constructed models with Alan in recent years.

Beth Gray can be reached at graybethn@earthlink.net.

[Last modified December 20, 2006, 02:38:00]