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by Margo Callaghan

At 90 years old, there comes to some people the ability to self-diagnose personality traits with piercing accuracy. Artist Raimond del Noce Senior is a self described "impatient man." He moved to Shelburne in June and has the first local showing of his watercolor collages already underway. He has the distinction to be the first artist at the inaugural exhibit at a new venue: the sales floor at Shearer Cheverolet.

The artist, the early days
Rai Senior came to Shelburne in June from Philadelphia, where he and his wife Kim resided for 30 years. He is a well-established watercolor artist. He has been affiliated with 35 galleries and has a successful commercial art career. The roots of his passion took hold much earlier in his life.

His "first career" was with J. Walter Thompson, the monolithic advertising agency, where Senior reigned as a creative director and upper level manager. The company sent him to open an office in Bombay, then to London, and finally to Montreal.

It was in Hudson, Quebec during the late sixties that Senior opened a loom and weaving studio, along with his then wife, Jinx Senior. He had given up the "ad man" life. "Advertising was changing and it wasn't what I wanted. I went on to discover the vitality of dimension through weaving," Senior explained. The weaving studio produced vivid dimensional designs from pieces commissioned as huge wall art coverings for major corporations, to small pillows.

But by the late 70s Quebec was in turmoil with talk of succession and the crippling effect of the oil crisis. The havoc took a toll on Senior's commercial clients in both Canada and the U.S. So Senior and his wife Kim, who is also an artist, moved to Philadelphia.

The artist, recent history
Senior was amazed at the impact TV and computers were having on the visual world around him. "The advent of back lighting graphics that TV and computer screens had introduced made me realize that watercolors were flat. How could I introduce light behind watercolors so that it would produce dimension?" Senior wanted his painting to share the magical characteristics exhibited by a simple stone when viewed through water. "That stone becomes so much more brilliant. I thought very much about what would happen if I put glass over my watercolors. But that didn't produce the dimension I was after." His portfolio at this juncture included larger than life studies of human faces using traditional watercolor techniques, as well as realistic scenery works.

Senior expanded his watercolor technique to include montages composed of drawings and photographs over which he would paint. He would cut the original photos into small shapes and then form a collage. "I move around all the pieces until I'm happy with the composition."
What he discovered in his quest for dimension was a new way to give watercolors depth. "I ordered hundreds of tubes of high quality water colors and I started applying watercolor with a pallet knife over the collages I created. It allowed me to build mountainous dimension," Senior explained.

As for the "glass" effect that would illuminate the paintings, he came to finalize his works in this new medium with a top layer of casing resin which supplied the play of light over the terrain of his paintings.