"Art does not reproduce the visible; rather it makes visible."

- Paul Klee, Creative Credo, 1920

Ask a plein air painter about their work and within their first few utterances you're certain to hear the notion of light. Whether it's "capturing," "reflecting" or "portraying," it is sure to be there, embedded or otherwise.

Ask them how they go about it and you're likely to hear any number of approaches, mostly complex and intricate explanations involving materials coupled with developing the gift of seeing.

Describing the process isn't any less difficult. Take Fred Doloresco, a local resident painter, who has for 15 years pursued both light, technique and style to create a set of works he's finally happy with. His works are shown and collected widely, and yet his journey isn't complete.

A mainstay at the Castle Gallery, Doloresco's offerings currently occupy a large portion of that space and have found homes in a number of private collections ranging from golfer Tiger Woods' father's living room to the Prime Minister of Moldova to public and corporate holdings in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Philadelphia and New Hampshire.

He is represented by galleries in Woodstock, Vermont; Nashville, Indiana; Atlanta, Georgia and Taos, New Mexico, and has been the recipient of numerous "best of show"awards and recognized in a variety of articles in national and regional publications.

Not a bad legacy for a guy who at one point in his life confronted a three-pronged fork in his path involving medical school, art school and a motorcycle.

Originally from Kansas City, Doloresco studied liberal arts at Saint Louis University and took a position as a probation officer back home after graduating in Psychology in 1970 followed by a degree in Chemistry from the University of Missouri in 1972. Despite his desire to stay involved in social work, the court system job didn't measure up to his expectations, and he began pondering his $750 in savings and how he might change his life's direction.

"My wife, who I'd help put through nursing school, left the choice to me," Doloresco explained. "I forgave the Honda and art school and chose medicine. Maybe it was as much out of respect as anything, but I had a family and needed to provide for them."

His natural instincts for art were put on hold during medical school, but he would, from time to time, spend some extra money on acrylics and set up an easel in the bedroom where he churned out, in his words, "lots and lots of really bad paintings."

A self-acknowledged "obsessiveÇ" Doloresco once took 40 hours of all the chemistry classes offered in two semesters, and when he checked in with his advisor he was told "Well, you can't do that." He did and eventually graduated cum laude from medical school and was named the Outstanding Graduate by the state's medical association in 1976.

His breakthough in art came when, on a visit out east, he discovered Monhegan, Maine and a thriving artists colony run by the internationally known painter and teacher, Don Stone.

"I showed up there with my acrylics in hand and of course immediately became the object of ridicule," Doloresco remembers. "I had the idea of things, but I was just such a rookie, and quite frankly I just wasn't any good.

"Sometime later I learned that Stone was taking a group to the Caribbean, and I asked if I could come along and take some classes. I found out later that he was real close to just telling me noÇ but he allowed me to join them, and once there one day I produced a piece of work that I knew was good, and Stone saw something in it. It's been a lot easier since then.

"More than a mentor (he taught me to 'see'), Stone, his wife, along with my wife and I have become very close friends. Some time ago we together rented a bargeand floated along a river in the south of France for a week, stopping every so often to ride our bicycles to a nearby village for lunch or whatever, then return to the barge set up our equipment and paint some more. It was entirely wonderful."

Before and since then Doloresco has visited several sites on the east coast, England and Italy, searching for the right light. Most recently, however, he has found it nearly in his own backyard. Despite the debt Impressionism owes to the French, Doloresco himself prefers what Americans have done with the genre. Nonetheless he, as he explains in his artist's statement, pays homage to a collection of European painters.

"Representing the quality of light in reflecting the beauty of God's gifts to us drives my painting," the artists writes on his website. "This I strive to express in landscapes and figurative work including scenes of intimacy, celebration and the dignity of work. Works by the later 19th and early 20th century Naturalists and Impressionists such as (Joaquin) Sorolla, (John) Sargent, (Anders) Zorn, Dagnan-Bouveret, the Cornwall group, (Nicolai) Fechin and (Frank) Benson stir an insuppressible 'Aaahhh!' in me. I hope what others see in my work in some small measure elicits a similar glimpse of previously overlooked beauty in our daily lives."

An avid fan of the cinema, Doloresco recently enjoyed watching Northfork and The Swimming Pool at the Cinema Center and expressed his disappointment that he hadn't stayed awake last Friday for a showing of Bergman's The Seventh Seal on local cable.

Although he liked both films, ambiguity is not a realm Doloresco is comfortable in.

"What did you think they were about?" he queried this writer. "I need answers. Maybe because I'm Catholic," he joked, "but I need more closure and less speculation."

The focus of his display at the Castle is a finely wrought scene of the Lakeside Rose Gardens in which he renders the afternoon light playing off the roses, other flora and the pillars of the white wooden structures encasing the scenic setting so familiar to the community. The Lakeside site was also the focus of a piece commissioned by the Parkview Foundation and has given Doloresco a most suitable object for his craftsmanship and vision.

Once projected as pieces for a larger series concentrating solely on Fort Wayne (a commission and other projects have put it on temporary hold) a pair of street scenes capturing Columbia Street (see cover) reflect the artists ability to render both inanimate objects like the red brick architecture as well as people and activity frozen in refracted light. In another, though not quite fully realized painting, Doloresco offers a Maumee Sunset mirrored in the water with light cast off bare trees and limbs and the sky.

Several smaller, golden framed paintings illustrate his gifts for finding the unnoticed beauty in everyday life. There are ponies, pickup trucks, harbor scenes and boats and a particularly delightful harbor scene done at St. Ives in Cornwall.

Once, Doloresco recalled, he was painting an old, dilapidated farm building in France when the middle-aged owner approached him.

"She came questioning me, in French of course, until she realized I spoke only English, and then I understood she was asking me why I was painting such an ugly, falling-apart structure. I asked her if she had a mother still living and she replied 'YesÇ' and in that instant she realized what I was doing and perhaps even why."