Gerald Zeldin's students say he taught them a new way of looking at the world.
When artist Gerald Zeldin started teaching at Ontario's Sheridan College in the early 1990s, he wasn't entirely convinced he had made the right decision.
For more than 20 years, after all, he had made a very successful living as an artist. He'd completed nine public commissions (including one at Toronto's Eaton Centre), mounted dozens of exhibitions (23 group shows, 25 solo), and sold his work to dozens of private collectors and several museums.
But by the late 1980s, the market had seriously contracted, and Zeldin's work was no longer in robust demand.
So with some reluctance, he took the job at Sheridan, teaching life drawing to the college's animation students.
The course could scarcely have been more aptly named. Because, as it turned out, Zeldin, then in his 40s, was an extraordinary teacher of both subjects: life and drawing.
Just how extraordinary becomes clear if you spend a few minutes on his Facebook page, now maintained by one of his former students, Angelo Lubutti, a rising star in the world of animation in Hollywood. There, Lubutti and other Zeldin alumni have deposited a small archive of loving tributes to a man they plainly regarded as part teacher, part friend, part mentor, part spiritual sage.
In one short video, former student Peg Serena says, "Ger, I was thinking about why you had such a great impact on me and it's because you had such a huge, contagious excitement about art - everything from the old masters to comic books and cars - how art affects every part of life, if you want it to. You changed the way I look at the world."
Almost identical language - about changing how they perceived the world around them - was used by several former students, among them Eric Henze, who added: "I don't think you realized how many people's lives you touched and the influence you had."
The tributes were videotaped as Zeldin lay dying in his Dundas, Ont., home. He passed away earlier this month, after a long battle against prostate cancer. He was 66.
Many students were surprised by the impact Zeldin had on them. Like Ricardo Curtis, they'd often arrive at Sheridan with a fair bit of background in high school art programs.
"I was pretty arrogant about my talent," says Curtis, who studied under Zeldin in the early 1990s and now owns two Toronto design and animation studios. "And then I get into his class and suddenly there's this older Jewish guy who is out-passioning me about art. How was this possible? He looked at one of my first drawings and said, 'That's fantastic. But you could do better.' He could cut ego like butter."
And it wasn't simply Zeldin's ability to teach drawing or perspective or human anatomy that impressed two decades of Sheridan students. What impressed them most was the spirit of the man himself - a gentle soul, enormously gifted, but utterly unassuming about his gift.
"I think what separated Gerry from others was that he didn't really recognize the distinction between students and peers," says Robin Joseph, a former student and now a designer of characters for animated feature films. "He told us that he would treat us as artists, as peers, and he did. We were allowed to treat the classroom as our studio."
Nor were students the only ones forcefully struck by his approach. A former teaching colleague, Charlie Bonifacio, credits Zeldin with virtually transforming the level of drawing coming from the animation program. "Almost all the students graduating ... even if their animation work seemed mediocre, their drawing portfolios showed a sense of passion and observation that could only be attributed to the inspiration of Gerry's ... mentorship. He taught his students to really observe and record with sensitivity, the gestural and sculptural aspects of the human form, while at the same time inspiring a simple passion for drawing through his enthusiastic classroom methods."
Personally, says Bonifacio, "Gerry seemed like a friend and colleague, an uncle and a brother, like a fellow wanderer and a wise old sage, all at the same time."
Some weeks ago, when it was clear Zeldin could no longer continue his teaching duties, the school granted him an official sabbatical. A small group gathered for a goodbye ceremony, complete with a chocolate cake presentation.
"A mortal disease has befallen me," Zeldin said to those assembled. "I have terminal cancer and it's not a nice thing. The prognosis is gloomy."
But he said all of this without a shred of self-pity or complaint. He was simply stating the unfortunate facts.
"But what's not gloomy is being here, and being with youze guys. It's been a remarkable journey. ... I'm not even sure I knew what animation was at first."
He spoke of his gratification in seeing so many former students rise in the ranks of commercial animation - in fact, many Sheridan grads are now considered among the best in the world.
The campus, he said, had never been just a school. It had been "a place to hang out with my friends."
"When I first started here," he acknowledged, "I felt sort of disassociated. I thought school was getting in the way of my own studio [work] But somehow school got in the way very nicely. In no way, did it diminish my own personal work. If anything, it's added to it."
Zeldin's artistic talent was recognized early on. "He was absolutely modest about it," recalls Robert Silverman, a childhood friend and now provost of Queen's University. "But he was always drawing." Silverman still owns a pencil sketch Zeldin made of a dog sitting on a stool at The Puppy Palace, once a popular hot-dog stand on Toronto's Bathurst Street.
As a boy, says Silverman, Zeldin was "mischievous, a class clown and very funny." Close all through their teens, they took road trips to the U.S. and went to Mosport Speedway to watch motor racing. Their paths diverged in university, but they reconnected a decade ago and, "it was like time stood still," says Silverman. What struck him about his old friend in maturity was his "kindness, gentleness and intelligence."
Zeldin's father, also a gifted artisan, half hoped his son would study medicine. But he also encouraged his interest in art, funding trips to Chicago and New York, to visit great museums.
"From this experience," Zeldin once said, "I came to know that I would disappoint my dad ... by becoming a painter."
But in fact, according to Zeldin's cousin Teri Brown, the elder Zeldin was forever proud of his son's artistic achievements.
He studied first at the Ontario College of Art and Design and then took a Master of Fine Arts at California's Claremont Colleges, graduating in 1967.
After a short period in Toronto, he moved to Dundas, and spent the next 20 years as a studio artist, creating paintings, sketches, figures and murals. He described his more recent work, on his website, as being "concerned with ambiguity ... nothing seems as it should." The work features "strong design elements, somewhat architectural in feel, and unabashedly entertaining, using a musical quality of shape, colour and line to involve the viewer ... everything is on the move. It comes from someplace, stands still for that moment and moves on - a frozen moment in time, framed by the before and after, as a film takes place through time, one moment at a time ...
"Objects appear to be in transition, something is toppling, something just fell and things are waiting for events, forces. Something is about to change."
His major artistic influences included Edward Hooper, Ben Shahn, David Levine, Nicolai Fechin and Picasso.
Of course, Zeldin had several other well-developed interests as well - among them, sports cars, motorcycles (he would buy and sell 70 different ones during his lifetime), movies and music, particularly jazz.
In 1998, after his first marriage ended in divorce, he married Madeleine, an old family friend. Suddenly, Zeldin, at 51, became a father to her 11-year old son, Julian Pinder, now a documentary filmmaker, as well as her two older sons. He forged a strong attachment to them all, particularly to Julian. They hiked for hours in the conservation area near the family home, and, later, enjoyed many motorcycle trips through the back roads of America.
In remarks he made after Zeldin's passing, Julian said: "Gerry was a metaphor for another way of being. He was everything I came to love. Records of Lionel Hampton and Georgia White ... Saul Steinberg over a cup of tea ... and a joint on a calm winter morning as Bob Dylan pulsed from the speakers. I aspire to make sense of the world through Gerry's eyes and am conscious of that aspiration every waking moment."
The relationship with Madeleine proved to be a genuine love match.
"In some ways, I think you could say his life began with Madeleine and her children," says Angela Stukator, another Sheridan College colleague and a close friend.
"Gerry used to say that we were more than in love," says Madeleine. "We were 'in magic,' and magic it was with him. ... I was attracted to his honesty and kindness and passion for life from the moment I met him almost 30 years ago. When we got together, we would say that we would be together until we were 95. Well, the universe had different plans."
Seven years ago, Zeldin was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer. The malignancy may have been the result of a medical error, a pharmacological treatment for thyroid deficit. In any event, the prognosis was grim. In 2003, according to Madeleine, "the doctors basically told Gerry to go home and die, because there was nothing else they could do for him."
Unwilling to accept that verdict, they travelled around the continent investigating alternative therapies. Madeleine gave up her teaching job to devote her time to his care and recovery. "We found a way to keep him healthy and alive for four beautiful, meaningful years," she says.
Toward the end, Zeldin told Stukator, "I'm having such a good time. I just don't want the party to end."
A week ago, Madeleine organized a memorial celebration of Zeldin's life at their home in Dundas. Former students came from near and far. Preparing for it, she had visited a garden centre to buy a hosta. "It's funny but I always thought of Gerald as an angel on earth ... I was in a hurry, as they were closing, so I just was attracted to one in the pile and grabbed it and took it to the counter. ... It sort of talked to me. I brought it home and saw on the label it was called 'Earth Angel.'
In his memory, Sheridan College has established a new Gerry Zeldin Life Drawing for Animation Scholarship.
Gerald Zeldin was born on Oct. 6, 1943, and died on May 20. He leaves his mother, Gert, his wife Madeleine, his stepsons, Jonathan (Tina), Jason (Jennifer) and Julian (Alejandra), and two grandchildren, Alessandra and Ethan.