Chatham Exhibition Displays Art Of 92-Year-Old Instructor Who’s Still Teaching

CHATHAM – In 1940, Robert Mesrop started drawing. He was 5 years old and used pencils, crayons and the like. As an 8-year-old, he received an oil paint set for a Christmas present.

Close to nine decades later, he’s still painting. Mesrop, 92, has made a lifelong pursuit out of watercolor art and teaching the medium. A Marstons Mills resident, he currently teaches at the Creative Arts Center in Chatham and Cape Cod Art Center in Barnstable.

“I love doing it,” Mesrop said. “I especially love teaching.”

Through much of July, the Creative Arts Center has showcased an exhibition of Mesrop’s work, titled “Robert Mesrop Retrospective: A Lifetime of Creativity Shared.” The show presents some of the many watercolor images produced by Mesrop, plus other art made during his long, still ongoing career.

Mesrop moved to the Cape 30 years ago. He was born in New York and grew up in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx. He studied art in high school and was awarded an “Excellent in Art” recognition upon graduation. Then he spent four years in the Air Force as a jet engine specialist working on B-47 medium bombers at March Air Force Base in Riverside, Calif. After, he was in Philadelphia — then back in California for further schooling. 

In the early ‘60s, he earned a bachelor of professional art degree from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. He proceeded to return to New York, where he worked as the art director for the J. Walter Thompson Ad Agency, creating imagery for brands like Ford Motor Company, Scott Paper and Prince Matchabelli perfume (some of that work was on display at the Creative Arts Center exhibition). That same decade, he started teaching watercolor painting at adult ed night school in Tenafly, N.J. He’s never stopped teaching.

“I’m still teaching,” Mesrop said. “My theory is, don’t stop what you’re doing.”

Mesrop retired from advertising in 1983 and relocated to the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York, where he continued instruction in watercolor painting. A few years later, he moved to New Bern, N.C. and kept teaching.

But it was too hot and humid for Mesrop in the South. He in turn settled on Cape Cod in 1996. He began teaching at the Creative Arts Center, the Cape Cod Art Center and the Falmouth Art Association. Here, Mesrop has students that have stuck with him for some 15 years.

“I get great enjoyment in interacting with students in my class,” he said.

In addition to watercolor, Mesrop has taught basic drawing — itself an important part of painting as it serves as the framework of the final image. Mesrop has previously expressed a fascination with changing lights and shadows — and his aim to capture those moments in time.

“I’m always trying to get the luminosity of light,” Mesrop said.

Watercolor, then, is the perfect medium for that with its freshness and said luminosity. But it’s also a medium that necessitates discipline, planning and forethought, Mesrop has said. Dive right into a painting unprepared and chances are an error will lead to watercolor bleeding into the blank parts of the canvas with no recourse.

“Watercolor is not a very forgiving medium, and I have to kind of paint the painting in my head before I start painting because there’s no white paint,” Mesrop said.

Mesrop’s work is exhibited at Fresh Paint Gallery in South Yarmouth. The show at the Creative Arts Center runs until July 24. A reception, attended by about 70 people, was held to open the display, which Mesrop said was “wonderful.”

“I was very pleased with it,” Mesrop said. “They did a beautiful job of hanging the show.”

In choosing which works to present, Mesrop selected those he thought would be most representative of what he’s done over the years. The paintings capture seascapes, boats, flowers, landscapes, houses, birds, fishermen and more.

Also on display were drawings and Mesrop’s authentically “Mad Men”-esque creations during his advertising days (just like Mesrop’s career, the television drama portrayed a 1960s New York ad agency).

“You name it, it’s in there,” Mesrop said about the exhibition.

Mesrop is, of course, still teaching. He also conducts painting demonstrations at locations throughout the area, like a demo in Rockport he held in recent weeks. For more than two decades, he’s sung as a bass-baritone in the choir at the Unitarian Church of Barnstable, where he once repaired the house of worship’s steeple clock. 

He tries to “keep busy all the time,” he said.

“Don’t let yourself get lazy,” Mesrop said. “Keep doing what you’re doing. It’s good for you.”