Henry David Thoreau wrote that most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

This statement cannot be used to describe Dr. Charles Zuill?s life-long romance with his work in the arts.

?Charles Zuill Retrospective: The Science of Art, Observation, Exploration, Experimentation? opens at the Bermuda National Gallery on Friday.

The exhibition covers the three main periods of his career, The Grey Scale Paintings (1968-88), the Soil Paintings (from 1988) and the more recent Experimental Paintings.

He is regarded as one of the ?founding fathers? of modernist painting in Bermuda.

Dr. Zuill trained at the Atlantic Union College in Massachusetts, the Byam Shaw School of Art in London, the Rochester Institute of Technology and at New York University.

Dr. Zuill initially studied science, but changed his degree to something he truly loved ? art. It?s been an affair which has spanned over four-and-a-half decades and shows no signs of letting up.

He has taught and studied, both in Bermuda and abroad, and has painted everywhere with a host of natural and man-made mediums.

Interviewed for this article, he reminisced about his life and shared his thoughts and philosophies on life, art, and his works, the students he has taught and his involvement with the founding of both the Bermuda National Gallery and the Arts Centre Dockyard.

?I have managed to make a career out of exactly what I enjoy doing and it has been a wonderful privilege in many ways,? he said, ?And I think it is something that other people can have if they don?t allow other things to come along and take over and I have never allowed that.

?Without mentioning any names, I was offered a position in management in one of the Front Street stores, but I thought, ?yikes I don?t want to do that?.

?I don?t know how exceptional that is, but I can remember Thoreau wrote about people living lives of quiet desperation and people do. They go to work and they come home. Well, I go to work and I come home, too, but I enjoy going to work and coming home. It?s a little different.?

Along the way, Dr. Zuill also taught in several institutions across the United States and at the Bermuda College.

?I never intended to teach, but after a while you are hungry enough and I didn?t see any point in starving to be an artist,? he said. ?So when I had an opportunity to teach I took it.

?I discovered that it was a thrilling experience. I liked being in a classroom and I liked my students. Of course I have had my share of students that have been a pain in the neck, but more often than not I have had students that have been a joy to be with.?

He said one of those ?pain-in-the-neck? students was ?really bright, arrogant, mischievous and I liked him immensely?.

?But he got seriously ill, in fact I got word that he was terminally ill in hospital, in Victoria, British Columbia,? said Dr. Zuill, who is 70 years old.

?I was teaching in the southwestern corner of Washington State. It must have been a whole day?s drive to get there and I went to see him.

?Somehow the news had preceded me that I was coming and as I came off the elevator I heard this really cheeky remark as I came down the hall and there he was standing in the doorway.

?His room had windows on all three sides and it was a grand view and he had been painting up a storm. So, I talked him about his illness and he skirted around the issue and then I brought him round to it and he said, ?listen I can?t handle it, I have put it in the hands of a higher power?.

?He got well and it wasn?t so terminal after all. Today he is really a rather successful illustrator. I haven?t seen him since, but they tell me he is enormously fat ? he was that way even in those days.

?That was one kind of student, but there were others who were colossal negatives.?

The artist attended the Byam Shaw School of Art, which in those days was a very conservative institution.

?Classes started in the cast room. I mean, what art school starts classes in the cast room?? he said.

?But, I chose it because I thought that I would get some solid skills in academic drawing and I think I did, and I have no regrets, even though I didn?t continue in that vein.?

Dr. Zuill?s work is really quite experimental. Some of the best things that he has done has took the least amount of time and energy.

?It just happened!? he exclaimed.

?It seems like ? without sounding hokey ? everything that I really wanted I have got and it seems that there are forces out there conspiring to work with you and I can?t explain it. But if you start something ? things happen.

?So, if you want to have a career in such and such a field, start it off and things will happen. I can?t explain it, but it is something to do with electricity,? he said through laughter.

There will be about 30 pieces on display during the retrospective and they will range from the 1960s to the present.

?You have to be really selective and I have gone through a number of periods,? Dr. Zuill said.

?For instance, back in the early 60s my work was reasonably realistic, I would say and there are two or three pieces from that period.

?Then in the latter part of the 1960s I was working on an MFA at the Rochester Institute of Fine Arts and I got to a block ? a real mental block and nothing seemed to work.

?So I decided that I would go back to some basic concepts and try that for a few weeks and kick start what I was doing. I decided to work with the grey scale and I worked with it for about 20 years.?

The grey scale stayed with him and ultimately became the subject of his dissertation at New York University.

He said doctorate students trying to find a topic for their thesis was a joke around the campus.

?I didn?t know quite what to do,? he said. ?And I put down a few possibilities and spoke to one of my professors and she said, ?that is the one, that is you?.

?I thought she must be kidding. How could I write a dissertation on the grey scale. But I started looking in the library and things started practically falling at my feet. They would almost fly off the shelf at me. And that is why I am saying if you want to do something all kinds of forces conspire to help you. I wrote this thing and I have never pretended to be an expert at writing, but after I wrote it I had to defend it.?

He said defending his writings was a scary experience and he thought he would simply fall apart.

?It was in the early afternoon and I didn?t eat because I had to be absolutely alert. The defence was to go on for about three hours, but they shook me up for about an hour and then when they thought they had done enough they asked if I would leave the room so that they could discuss it.

?I thought ?thank goodness for that? because I have to go to the bathroom. When I was in there I heard the door open up, so I hurried out and there was one of the committee members and I remember exactly what he said and I could have wrung his neck. He said, ?you have failed to convince us why we shouldn?t pass you?.

?I thought, ?you devil?. So, I went (back) in and they said, ?they were nominating me for a special honour because they thought it was so well written. And then one of them, an Indian guy, said that if I decided to publish it he would like the honour of writing the foreword. But I never published it.

?Another professor said I had written the finest dissertation that he had read in 20 years.?

While writing his dissertation, he read ?The Elements of Drawing? by John Ruskin, who Dr. Zuill referred to as ?a strange Victorian who liked painting little girls?.

He was a strange bloke but he was a brilliant writer,? he said, ?And he drafted this little saying that if he could take mud from off the street he?d make it glow and grade it from light to dark.

?I thought ?well I?ll try that? and I went and collected samples of soil and sand from around here. I mixed it with and acrylic medium and I did a painting which is going to be in the show.

?It was a bit crude and it now belongs to (BNG curator) David Mitchell. One of the reasons that I like it is that it is a bit crude ? it has this strength to it and I can be pretty objective about it because basically I didn?t know what I was doing. I was experimenting. Then I surrounded it with gold leaf and later someone asked me why I did that and I said, ?well, if all the gold was to disappear in this world, we?d probably get along, but if all the soil was to disappear we?d be in major trouble?.

?They said that I had a warped sense of values, but we?ve got to eat and we don?t eat gold.?

Through this experimental experience it brought his love of science and art together.

?I liked having my hands in this muck and I liked making mud pies as a kid,? Dr. Zuill said.

?I started doing things with all-natural materials and I would walk around one of the Railway Trails in Paget and they had a cutting where they had what they called Pallio soil.

?Through this I got into geology. I have always been into science, in fact I have an identical twin brother, Henry, who is a scientist.

?But during that time I used to pick these fossils out and it was very fine and really lovely to work with and when you mixed it up with an acrylic medium it had a real creamy consistency. It felt good in the hands and I used to do things with it.?

In more recent times, Dr. Zuill worked in Michigan ? a job that was supposed to last only a year.

?When I retired from the Bermuda College I got an offer to go out there for a year and it stretched to five years.? He had spent time in Michigan before and later had a show, ?A Summer Series?, inspired from his time there.

?I was doing natural things and using natural materials, so I got sand from the beach. One of the pieces in the show was created towards the end of that summer.

?My friend, who is now my wife, and I were looking for fossils, but all this colour was coming off on my hands.

?So, I took some of those stones because I figured that I could draw on some of the harder stones. I tried it on paper and I didn?t get much response ... and I began to make sandpaper.

?I would smear it on a piece of paper with acrylic medium and then I made myself a mason?s float to smooth it out, I?d let it dry and then I could draw on it. There was something a little magical about drawing with pebbles.?

During the last five years he has been less inclined to work with natural materials.

?I was more inclined to use paint, but not necessarily artist?s paints. Stuff from the drug and hardware stores, trash, a bunch of plastic I found, I made use of.?

He has a game for working things out and he asks himself and his students: ?What if I did such and such??

?Later on I taught a course on experimental painting and students would come to me and ask ?what if I did such and such?? So, I?d say, ?beats me, try it?. I will never fail you for trying something that didn?t work, but I will fail you for not trying.

?You have got to try it and the worst that would happen is that it just won?t work and you now know what won?t work. So, you just keep working and if you find something that didn?t work, then you have to ask, ?why didn?t it work??

?It is like Edison when he was inventing the light bulb, he said he knew 99 things that wouldn?t work.?