PROVINCETOWN – This past weekend, 1,000 people were walking around Provincetown wearing Jerome Greene’s artwork. In his own way, he painted the town. It’s what he’s done since he arrived 12 years ago.
From the East End, where 18 pieces of his artwork had an opening at the Arthur Egeli Gallery to the West End and all through the center of town, were folks wearing blue shirts featuring Greene’s painting of the boats, “Pat Sea” and “Joan & Tom”.
His painting of the two iconic Provincetown fishing boats that sank together in 2005 was featured on the T-shirt of the Portuguese Festival and the 72nd “Blessing Of the Fleet,” which was this past weekend.
“My job as an artist, what I’ve taken on, is to capture my period in Provincetown, my time in Provincetown.” – Jerome Greene
Greene said the Portuguese population and especially the fishing industry was “the longtime heart of this community.” And, he said that using his artwork “to celebrate that part of the town is really an honor. It’s kind of like a welcoming into town after 12 years.”
Greene appears plenty welcome in Provincetown as sidekick/frontman for The Broke Brothers band; the maintenance man at the Fine Arts Work Center (where he has a studio); and, especially as an artist who has shown work at the Arthur Egeli Gallery for five years.
With an eclectic, bohemian, and well-rounded background that has always featured art, Greene, 57, has slowly wandered from his roots in New Britain, Connecticut to, eventually Provincetown, where he instantly, over the course of many years, found his home.
“Always kind of a free spirit”
Greene’s father was “a commercial artist and an art teacher. He was a commercial design professor at Central Connecticut State University,” he said.
The second youngest of seven children, Greene said, “I grew up around art.” He spent time as a child going to art fairs, and, he said, all of his siblings are creative.
As a child, Greene said, “my parents would dump me off at my brother’s place,” where he would watch his brother, Ray, brother 14 years older, do his own artwork – sculpting, painting and such.
“I was young, 10 or 11 years old,” he recalled. “I’d go there and watch him work, mind the store.”
His brother, who died in 2007, would “give me a ream of paper and say, ‘Draw stuff, man,’ while he got stoned out back,” said Greene.
“He was a hippie dude,” said Greene. “Then we’d go camping at night on the Farmington River and throw potatoes and onions on the fire and eat them smothered in butter… It was the greatest little childhood anybody could ever ask for.”
Reflecting back on his childhood, he said, “I think I was an artist then. I was a real creative kid, always making something, doing something.”
And, he recalled, “I was always kind of a free spirit and didn’t want to be bothered by the normal anything.”
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