An Island artist’s life is filled with a certain brand of Bohemian glamour. Gallery openings. Breezy summer cocktail parties. Endless hours spent in pursuit of brilliant creativity.

Cleaning hospital biohazard rooms. Driving a delivery truck.

Wait. What?

Being an emerging artist has its romance, certainly, but it also lays claim to its share of reality. And in reality, even the most talented painters, sculptors, and photographers don’t spring out of the gate making huge sales and landing shows at big-name galleries. Getting to that point requires more than being gifted. It takes determination, drive, and usually, a not-so-glamourous way to supplement any art sales – that is, the day job.

In the summer of 2001, long before he sold his first painting at The Field Gallery in West Tisbury, Kenneth Vincent – a 1999 graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design – took a job as a custodian at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. He scrubbed floors, cleaned carpets, and kept the biohazard room pristine. In his off-hours, he worked on his paintings and illustrations.

Vincent, twenty-eight, whose previous jobs had included parking-lot attendant at Lambert’s Cove Beach and a very brief stint as a telemarketer (“I quit after five hours,” he says), didn’t particularly enjoy the cleaning profession. (“It sucked.”)  Still, it paid the bills and provided benefits, and he was able to continue working on illustrations for The Martha’s Vineyard Times and children’s books – and on his paintings, a few of which he brought to The Granary Gallery on a lark in the summer of 2002. “I was near Four Corners in West Tisbury one day when it occurred to me that I should just go in there and show them my stuff, which at the time was mostly still-lifes,” Vincent recalls. “I had nothing to lose.”

The gamble paid off – sort of. “Chris Morse liked one of the paintings I had with me,” says Vincent of the Granary owner, “and said, ‘Hey, we’ll give you a shot at The Field Gallery.’” Did that mark the end of Vincent’s hospital days? Not quite. “I didn’t sell a thing,” he laughs. So he kept the custodian job, which soon offered a bit of artistic serendipity.

The following spring, “one of the nurses told me the hospital wanted a mural for the children’s room. I put a proposal together, and asked for what I thought was way too much money, figuring they’d talk me down,” Vincent says. “I knew if I got the mural, I’d be able to take a shot at doing art full-time.” He got it. After completing the mural, he also got the courage to ask Dave Wallace at The Field Gallery why he hadn’t sold any pieces in 2002. “I knew he would be honest with me. And he told me, ‘Anyone can buy a still-life anywhere. You need to paint what you know, paint from your experience.’ So I went right out and did two landscape paintings.” The first, he admits, “was a total Allen Whiting rip-off,” which isn’t surprising given that he grew up on Martha’s Vineyard admiring Whiting’s work. The second, however, was something new.

Painting at Cedar Tree Neck, Vincent knew the piece wasn’t working. “As a fling, I started making more geometric shapes and pulling bold colors out. I liked that painting.” So did Wallace. He told Vincent to paint five more in his evolving style, which Vincent describes as informed by the Vineyard, but different from other things out there. “I think I sold all six paintings in two weeks,” Vincent says. “I’ve been working in that style ever since, and I had my first show last summer.”     

This year he’s been splitting his time between illustrating (his book, Rupert the Rooster Goes to the Fair, comes out this summer; illustrating now supplements his painting income) and painting. He had over two  dozen paintings in a show with Alison Shaw and John Philip Hagen at The Granary Gallery in July. (The artwork remains on view.) He won’t be putting in any more hours cleaning the biohazard room at the hospital, but the mural that enabled him to retire is still there.

Traeger diPietro also has a day job that enables him to support his passion for painting, but it’s not something he feels a pressing need to leave anytime soon. A 2000 graduate of the University of Maine, diPietro has always had a distinctive creative bent. (“I had a heavy hand with crayons when I was a kid,” he says. “I broke a lot of them.”) A broken wrist and the ensuing break in his high school baseball career encouraged him to foster his talent in a serious way. “I had nothing else to do after school, so I started drawing and painting.”

Baseball resumed when the wrist healed, but art had taken over. “I only played for a year in college,” diPietro says. “I went home to paint every day.” Upon graduation, he headed straight to the Vineyard with friends, and landed a summer job with Coca-Cola. “My friends told me it was a great place for artists, and they were right. I was painting every day after work.” The tourist season ended, his friends departed, diPietro stayed.

Driving a delivery truck for Coca-Cola turned out to be the perfect occupation for diPietro, now twenty-eight. First of all, he says, “all day long I’m driving around looking at beautiful landscapes, getting inspired to paint. In a way, I’m painting all day.” And from a more practical standpoint, getting to know restaurant owners who agree to hang his work in their dining rooms has earned him something all artists with a prayer of being commercially successful need: exposure.

“I sold my first painting in 2002,” diPietro says. “It was hanging in Café Moxie, and it was of a scene people could see from inside the restaurant. Someone at dinner saw it and wanted it.” Stylistically, Van Gogh and Cézanne are influences, but the subject matter he likes best is more Norman Rockwell. “He captured moments really well,” diPietro says.

Restaurants have been ideal venues for diPietro’s warm, striking work – but major Island galleries are taking notice, too. The Louisa Gould Gallery in Vineyard Haven and Featherstone Gallery in Oak Bluffs both showed diPietro’s paintings this spring. The Dragonfly Gallery, also in Oak Bluffs, will have a showing of his work on September 3 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

This doesn’t mean he’s abandoning restaurant walls. His work hangs in Balance (the Oak Bluffs restaurant, that is) and will be featured in August at the Vineyard Haven location of Mocha Mott’s. As for driving the delivery truck, he’s sticking with that, too. “Sure, I’d love to be able to paint full-time,” he says. “But until I get to a point where I don’t have to have another job, I really like this one. I like seeing every part of the Island, and saying hello to customers, and being involved in their daily routine.” And always, of course, being on the lookout for those moments – not necessarily glamorous ones, but real ones – worth capturing on canvas.

Advice to aspiring artists

“Find places where you have realistic opportunities to get your stuff noticed, then set a time to act on those opportunities.”  
 – Kenneth Vincent

“It helps me as an artist to be tested by the daily grind of everyday existence. Seeing people all the time is a wonderful way to expand my ideas for painting. For me, driving a truck is perfect. Being a bartender or teacher would work, too.” 
– Traeger diPietro