Arnold Roth: Free Lance celebrates the fun that Roth has had–and has shared with us–for more than fifty years. He knows what he wants to draw and enjoys doing it. His hand is sure and facile as it moves to create images that capture their viewer’s imagination, pictures that seem already to be completed in his mind and flow onto the page. His sens of color is subtle, adding to the drawing but never overwhelming its lines. His bravura control of watercolor, breathtaking.

Because he is so well-known as a watercolorist, many may be surprised to know that Leland S. McClelland’s first ambition was to be a cartoonist. Drawing Attention: Pen Stroke and Perspectives from Great Lakes Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society published in 1997 includes the following autobiographical statement:

“From the time I was old enough to read the funnies I wanted to be a cartoonist on the Columbus Citizen, one of the two afternoon newspapers in the city at that time. I didn’t want to be on the Chicago Tribune or any other big papers – just the Citizen. In the summer between my two years of studying art and cartooning at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art, I took my samples in to the managing editor of the Citizen. He liked what he saw and hired me for the summer, even though I wasn’t all that good. He held the job open for me for the next year until I finished at the CAFA. I held the job until the paper went the way that so many papers did – it folded in 1959. I went to work for the city’s largest ad agency and stayed until 1964 when I quit and opened my own studio. When I left the Citizen, I started to paint watercolors which I did until I retired. I’ve always loved cartooning and cartoonists – they’re my kind of people. I’ll always consider myself a cartoonist first and something else second. “

Cartoons like all mass entertainment are both a reflection of the society in which they are created and a creative force with an impact on that society. Jews, as the exhibition well demonstrates, have been major contributors to American cartoon arts from early in this century to the present day. They brought their own unique outlooks, influenced by immigration and assimilation, to their craft. One can trace the tide of American life through Jewish eyes in their work, and at the same time one can point out the paths by which they have influence the way all American see themselves.

The drawing of Paul Palnik have always been, for me, a gentle art, the work of an artist who understand the power of faith and love. The format he has chosen is the common cartoon image presented in a poster. It is a form appropriate to his generation, raised on the animated cartoons of film and television, and to his subject matter, the human comedy.