What Was He Thinking? JAN BALET: Watercolors & Lithographs December 1, 2017 - January 14, 2018 Adam and Eve, 1979, lithograph, 23 3/4” x 18” Jan Balet 1913 - 2009 ARTREACH GALLERY at First Congregational UCC 1126 SW Park Ave Portland, OR uccportland.org/artreach
[email protected] JAN BALET: A Personal Reflection by Peter Balet During my childhood and teenage years, my father lived in Long Island, NY, and I upstate. But there were frequent visits. On one occasion, I remember my father flying over my house and dropping a ball before landing at the nearby airport where my mother and I picked him up. Little did I know at that time that my father was an emergent artist who illustrated advertisements for all the leading magazines, although by my teenage years I collected them. I was a child, delighted when he wrote and illustrated his first children’s book and I received in the mail Amos and the Moon with the inscription “To Peter from Daddy” -- and with a hand-drawn face on the inside cover. My father left the United States and returned to Europe in 1965. He quit the commercial world and began to devote himself to painting, lithography, and writing and illustrating children’s books. Communication with him continued via letters at Christmas and birthdays, but I did not see him again until after I married and raised a family; our children were grown before job constraints permitted overseas travel. However, whenever my father published another children’s book or produced a lithograph, I would receive a copy in the mail.