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A Brief History

I WAS born in San Francisco and reared, mostly, in the Bay Area, with stints in Southern California and the state of Washington, close to the Canadian border. We moved around because my stepfather was a career military man.

I was undistinguished in school, unless they rated clowning around, where I was well above average, maybe even gifted. Mr. Walsh, my high school art teacher, had me pegged.

The story I got is that one day in the faculty room another teacher, Mr. Gentile, asked if anyone knew of a student who could work with him on the set for the senior play. Mr. Walsh said, "There is a kid, Logan Franklin, who is pretty good with a pencil or brush—but he's just wasting his time fooling around!" The exclamation point is mine, but I'd bet my house, my dog and my car that it came out that way. (I learned of this years later when Mr. Gentile became a newspaper columnist and told the story.)

After high school I enlisted in the Marines and they quickly got my attention. When my tour of duty was completed, I entered my family's printing and publishing business and went to school nights. I stayed twenty years (in business, not school) and eventually led the company.

But the art rumblings never left me. For a long time I kept the beast at bay by doing newspaper editorial cartooning under a pen-name (see cartoons). In 1980, I sold my ownership interests in the company and planned a cartoon feature I hoped to syndicate. Out for a walk one day, I wandered into a college art department. It was as if I had been living in a dark room and someone switched on the light. I decided on the spot I would paint. I enrolled, stayed two years, and by 1985 was painting full-time. Later, in 1992, I added printmaking to painting. There's symmetry in that, I think, my having been in the printing business all those years.

I use lots of bright, undiluted primary and secondary colors. There was a time when I was timid about color, and when I finally opened up, I really opened up. There is a cartooning influence in my work, too; and sometimes I play around with cubism, or something akin to it, to deal with depth and space. In the style spectrum, I'm not sure where I fit in. I don't think it matters.

I live in California and most of my travel has been in the West, and naturally that influences my perspective. I see myself as painting the American scene, my part of it anyway. The subjects I choose range from landscape to animals to musicians to street scenes. Jazz and country musicians are fascinating to me. I think you have to know something about jazz and country music to fathom American culture.

The themes are invariably upbeat. I don't care for most grievance art. Matisse had a good time and the right idea: Fill a space with fun and color and good passions.

Can you see my art anywhere in a gallery? Not at this time. I have been represented in galleries here in Northern California and in the Southwest. For various reasons, the alliances ended and I’ve made no effort to cultivate new ones. I don’t rule out the possibility for the future, but it seems unlikely. Right now, I like the personal contact with people who come to see my art either where I live or at the few public venues that are convenient. I think the Internet, too, will become more-and-more a "gallery" of the future.