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Keeping up with Clyde Pax By Clare Karis
 Does
art imitate life? Or is it the other way around? That conundrum
is so old it may have flashed into the brain of the first
caveman who scratched a symbol on his wall.
For philosophy professor-turned-painter Clyde Pax, the question would more likely
be: Does art imitate philosophy?
Pax attended Notre Dame for undergraduate studies, received his master’s
degree from St. Louis University, and returned to Notre Dame to pursue his doctoral
studies. Then came a year of postdoctoral work in Germany as well as sabbatical
study in Mexico. A father of six — three boys, three girls — and
now a grandfather of seven, he taught philosophy at Holy Cross from 1961 to 1991.
He started painting 15 years ago, while he was still teaching, in an effort to
understand the philosophical texts of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who, according to
Pax, studied “the meaning of painting and the truth of painting.”
“I had to do some hands-on work in painting to understand what he was saying,” Pax
said. “Painting is an attempt to see, and so is philosophy. Both are concerned
with questions of perception. In order to perceive, we have to be involved. Intellect
must take that as the model. Perception is nascent thought. Thinking never leaves
its roots. When we see a tree, we see that the tree is there; we see its presence.
The whole issue of form or shape — finite being — is a difficult
question.”
“What does it mean to be?’’ he ponders. “I’m trying
to answer the questions of being and possibility in my painting.”
In addition to paintings, Pax does etchings and monograms. “You can’t
tell what a print will look like until it comes out. In a print, everything comes
about in a different way than in painting,” he says. When he paints, he
works mostly in acrylics but has also tried his hand at oils.
“Acrylics are easier to work with and less toxic. Oil offers more possibilities,
more subtle effects,” he notes.
Having recently had a monthlong exhibit of mixed media, “Faces and Other
Showings,” mounted at the Worcester Public Library, he is now starting
work on a series of murals for the Public Inebriate Program shelter. “There
will be six murals, or removable panels, for the dining room,” he said. “For
the PIP shelter, I’m trying to paint something that will bring hope to
the people.” Explaining that the murals won’t be done until the end
of the summer since he is the only one working on them, he almost self-chidingly
adds, “Oh, but you never really work alone. You’re always working
in a community.”
One of the panels, he knows, will be based on the poem, “Pied Beauty,” by
British poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, a line of which is “Glory
be to God for dappled things.”
Pax says of retirement — as full as his life is, it’s still officially
Retirement — “It gives me the opportunity to be more free in my work
and to do other kinds of things. I’m not in the order of production anymore.
I’m very happy to be retired.” In addition to painting, he has done
extensive traveling with his wife; they just returned from England, after spending
time in Oxford and Oxfordshire. Earlier sojourns took them to Vermont and Montreal,
and last October found them in Rome. “It’s a wonderful city,’’ he
says. “You can’t exhaust it.”
When the Pax children were young, their dad took a leave to study theology in
Muenster, Germany, and the children attended German schools. The family spent
a year in Mexico as well. “The children learned to travel,” he remembers.
Readily conceding that his style of painting is evolving
with each brush stroke, Pax says, “ I’m still
trying to find out what I can do. You have to see what you
see. I’m trying to understand what is before me. In
philosophy, you try to see the world in its full implications.
In everything I paint, I’m trying to get at the question
that is there. I’m trying to answer questions of being
and possibility in my painting.’’
A visitor points to a white birch, its new spring-green leaves ruffling on a
May morning’s breeze. “Now if you painted that birch tree, would
it be recognizable as a birch tree?”
“Oh, it might be,” he says with a smile. “Or perhaps you would
see the wonder, or the joy, or the patience of the tree as it stands there. There
is a marvelous patience in trees. If we could have only one-tenth of the patience
of a tree as we wait for a friend,’’ he muses.
Pax explains that sometimes a work of art strolls down a path all its own — one
the artist could never have envisioned. “The paint does the painting, ‘’ he
says. “The artist is merely the conduit.” According to Pax, the artist
must let the medium and the canvas take over at some point.
Of the supernovas of the art universe, Pax admires Paul
Cézanne and Vincent Van Gogh. “Cézanne’s
colors are tremendously good, and he has such spontaneity.
Van Gogh’s effort to see show in his work. But everyone
who looks at a painting sees something different, because
of the interaction between the viewer and the viewed. Klee
said, ‘You have to let the forest look at you before
you can see the forest,’” Pax reminds gently.
Expanding on the idea of interaction — the mutual giving and receiving
that makes the world go around, Pax says, “You can’t walk unless
a space opens up before you, and unless the earth holds you up. People today
are too busy! They should try to see the earth as a place to play, where they
can be at home.”
He has taken many art classes with John Reardon at the College. “When I
first started, I was so scared I cut the first class,” he says. Since that
inauspicious beginning, Pax has logged at least six courses at Holy Cross and
more than 20 at the Worcester Art Museum.
“I try to do some art work every day, but I don’t always,” says
Pax. He also reads a good deal, often books with a connection to art or philosophy.
Right now, in an attempt to understand the painting of Alberto Giacometti, he
is reading A Giacometti Portrait by James Lord.
Pax also devotes some of his spare time to discussion groups; he currently belongs
to four study and prayer groups. The artists’ group, which has two participants
in their 40s and two in their 70s, discusses the weighty questions of art and
philosophy and the interplay of the two. “There are two artists and one
sculptor,’’ says Pax. “I’m the lost sheep still hunting
for my roots.” Another discussion group, which is made up of Holy Cross
professors from various disciplines such as philosophy and psychology, meets
four or five times a semester.
Pax finds strength and comfort in ever-closer connections with spirituality in
his life. He has come to realize, he says, that “our biggest issue here
on earth is to praise the Lord. I don’t see any way to live without linking
us back to the creator. People are the Lord’s expression; it is so hard
to do anything alone. We can’t do anything alone. Ants, crickets, everything — we
are all brothers and sisters in creation.’’
Addressing today’s problem of youth violence, which explodes too often
in the gory tableaux of Columbine and Jonesboro, Pax ventures, “Society
is afraid to ask why we shouldn’t be violent, or why the students should
not have killed. We simply haven’t given each other enough reasons to be
nonviolent.
“Our society is so given to functioning well. That’s not enough for
human life. We have to respect each other. We should rejoice in transcendence — take
the focus off ourselves. Take time to stop and listen and pray.”
Clare Karis is a free-lance journalist living in Fitchburg,
Mass.
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