When John Kaufmann was seven years old he decided he wanted to be an artist, but when he arrived home with a collection of oil paints his mother told him it couldn’t be done.

“You will make a mess,” she said, and hid the paints away.

Fortunately for the art world, the young Saltus Grammar School student eventually found those hidden paints, and followed his instincts. In fact, his first painting, done at age ten, now forms the starting point of his 70th birthday retrospective, ‘Essential Elements, 1947-2007’ — a 30-piece collection which opens to the public at the Bermuda National Gallery today.

From those early years at Saltus, when he successfully convinced then-headmaster Henry Hallett to let him drop Latin in favour of advanced level art — the only student to do so — Mr. Kaufmann is acknowledged today as “one of Bermuda’s few true masters, and certainly one of its greatest living artists” whose work is not only much admired and eagerly sought after, but also hangs in prestigious galleries, corporate buildings and private collections here and abroad.

The fact that he has been twice-honoured with a retrospective at Bermuda’s only national gallery is further evidence of the high esteem in which he is rightfully held.

Yet Mr. Kaufmann remains as modest as a Sunday painter.

“I was flabbergasted,” he says of the BNG’s most recent invitation. “It’s sort of fun, but I don’t like the spotlight on me. All these things people are saying ... I have never particularly thought that is what I was.” A graduate of Montreal’s McGill University, where he studied art and design, Mr. Kaufmann went on to Britain’s Royal College of Art and the Academie Julian in Paris, where he studied with Matisse. He was also a pupil of the influential ‘Canadian Group of Seven’ landscape painters of the early 20th century, and studied art at Bard College in New York with renowned abstract painter and woodcut artist Louis Shanker.

A man whose talents are wide-ranging and also include architecture (he is a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects); theatre, restaurant, discothéque, china and silverware design, Mr. Kaufmann is also widely travelled. Among the many countries he has visited — and captured on canvas — are South Africa, Iran, the Ivory Coast, Guatemala and Central America. Together with his wife and manager, Roxanne, he also owns ‘Hamelin Farm’ in Colebrook, New Hampshire, which he visits regularly, and where the scenery is very different “with lots of things going on”.

“It’s on Piper Hill because John is the ‘Pied Piper’ — people follow him down the street,” Mrs. Kaufmann says.

While architecture and landscapes are oft-painted subjects, perhaps because of his Bermudian heritage the artist is particularly fond of seascapes.

“It is about the reflection of light on the water, the sun, the clouds, the use of the horizon, and the ability to evoke a mood, but most important is the feeling of infinity,” he says. Whereas for many years Mr. Kaufmann worked in oils, today his chosen medium is acrylics on canvas — a switch he made nine years ago principally because of the death of his beloved dog. “My golden retriever, Titian, spent a lot of time in my studio and he developed cancer. I was concerned about that because of the hydrocarbons in the painting materials. There had been a number of articles written about them, and particularly the volatile thinners I was using to clean brushes and so forth, and I thought, ‘This is not a good thing’.

“Also, I had had plenty of first-hand experience with the durability and the permanence of acrylic materials through my work with SKB roof systems, so I figured I could make a medium that would enable me to more closely do exactly what I was doing with oils in terms of giving body to the paint, and so on. In addition, acrylics don’t yellow, and they are flexible. There is less cracking when the canvas is rolled up.”

Mr. Kaufmann’s approach to a painting begins with the visual selection of a subject, which he either sketches or photographs before returning to his studio. He then spends a great deal of time planning the painting, but once a brush is in his hand he then works very quickly because he says that is what makes his work “freer”.

He prefers a palette of soft colours, and will adjust whatever he feels is necessary “to bring the eye around, because it has to work as a painting.”

Background music to match his mood and inspire him is an integral part of the creative process, and is always playing in the background.

“Movement in the music controls my brush and helps to free it up,” he says.

Choices range from opera to classical, jazz, or even a favourite a pop group or singer. In fact, during my personal tour of the retrospective, the artist readily identified the composer and work associated with a particular painting.

Beyond the painting, he also makes and gilds his own frames.

In an overview of his multi-faceted life, the Montreal-born son of the late Canadian surgeon, Dr. Mark Kaufmann, and his Bermudian wife Jeannette indicates that art is at the core of everything he has done.

“Art has been a creative process, whether I was designing a theatre, a restaurant, painting, or trying to make a roof system work.”

Referring to the highly successful SKB roof system which he invented, Mr. Kaufmann continues, “One of the chemists said the reason I had been so successful was because nobody had told me it couldn’t be done, so I went ahead and did it. He was saying that I was not bound by specific training in polymer chemistry so I was taking each chemical and experimenting with it to get the effect I wanted. It is the same with architecture. I love creating.”

Needless to say, Mr. Kaufmann’s mother is today a proud supporter and admirer of her son’s art, and indeed all that he has accomplished since finding the hidden paints and pursuing his creative instincts all those years ago.

‘Essential Elements 1947-2007’, curated by Dr. Charles Zuill, is one of two Summer exhibitions opening to the public today at the Bermuda National Gallery. The other is ‘Hair in African Art’. Both will continue through September 7. For gallery hours/further information see ‘Exhibitions’ in the Bermuda Calendar.

The Essential Kaufmann