Stanley Maltzman (1996)

Nature called Stanley Maltzman, and Freehold and its environs have been the beneficiaries over the past 40 years.

Starting as a commercial artist, Stanley heeded the beckoning call of the trees and clouds and stone walls and barns. At first, in the early 1950s, he would stay weekends at Stevens’ Greenville Arms and especially Schmollinger’s Pleasant View Lodge, wandering over the back roads and hilltops until he found the setting that called that day. In the early 1970s, Stanley open a gallery near Freehold’s four corners; two years later, he and his wife Rachel would build their house on a gentle hillside with a panoramic view of the Catskills, spreading from the Durham peaks across Windham High Peak and blackhead to North Point.

Although talented in a variety of media, it is the pencil and charcoal sketches and drawings of Stanley’s that amaze us. Here is an artist who makes real what we thought we knew: the winter woods, the rough knothole, the twisted root, the wispy cloud, the maze of pine branches, the rush of a valley stream, the barb-wrapped fence post, the grain of well-worn barn siding.

Along with a string of regional and national awards and honors, Stanley Maltzman has written and illustrated Drawing Nature (North Light Books, Cincinnati, 1995) in which he shows many of the techniques he uses. An additional bonus is the inclusion of dozens of Stanley’s works. Although nature is the focus of Stanley’s work, and unintended consequence is the recording of structures, many of which no longer exist. On the front cover is a sketch of the Shaw farmhouse on Big Woods Road in Freehold, a structure abandoned in the mid-1960s and destroyed by fire about 1980, now the site of the Sinkway residence (midway between O’Hara Road and Weed Road).

Thus we recognize our area’s celebrated naturalist artist for several aspects of his career: “for making us aware of the multitude of pictures available everywhere we look” (from the conclusion of Drawing Nature), for recording the beauty and spirit of our area, for drawing regional attention to Greene County nature, and for having his shared his career with us.

Thank you, Stanley Maltzman.

By Don Teator, Greenville Town Historian