Policeman to painter: Former Eugene officer Gene Costanza is making a name for himself as a landscape artist

Thirty years ago, Gene Costanza gave up art and became a cop. In those days he was a student at Lane Community College, studying drawing and painting with the young art faculty there, and not even getting close to becoming the artist he thought he should be. ``I got frustrated,'' Costanza explained the other day, sitting in a home studio packed with landscape paintings that he sells through galleries in Jackson, Wyo., and Ketchum, Idaho. ``I never did get as good as I wanted to be. I talked to the head of the art department at the University of Oregon one day, and he told me I had to go to New York if I wanted to be an artist. I pretty much didn't like the idea of going to New York.''

So Costanza, who is now 50, quit painting. He threw out his paintings, got rid of his paints and brushes, and stopped thinking about art altogether. A military service brat who had moved around the country with his family before landing in Roseburg and Eugene for high school, Costanza had been hanging out at a karate studio where a bunch of Eugene police officers worked out. He liked their stories of life on the job. In 1977 he found a job with the Roseburg Police Department. Two years later he got hired by the Eugene police.

"I only intended to stay in police work about five years,'' he said. "Have some fun. Buy myself a car.'' But soon Costanza was married and had a child, and it got pretty hard to let go of that steady paycheck. Besides, he loved police work, spending unpredictable shifts in a patrol car, getting to know the town's seamier side while working with colleagues he liked and respected. He was locked in to a new life, and he didn't mind one bit. Meanwhile his career blossomed. He worked on the SWAT team for nine years. He made sergeant. He survived a shooting attempt by shooting the other guy first. He became a K-9 dog handler. Next thing he knew he was a detective with more than 20 years of service behind him.

But about 10 years ago, he started thinking about art again. He was in a gallery in Scottsdale, Ariz., one day and came face to face with a painting of the Grand Canyon. "I was floored,'' he said. "Art had been sitting on the back burner all this time. I was just floored.''

Learning to be a painter can be a challenge nowadays. Costanza knew he had no interest in much of the art he was seeing from contemporary artists. "I wanted to do classical realism,'' he said. "And everything was contemporary, modern, post-modern, abstract shock art. And it didn't appeal to me.'' He called Creswell painter Don Prechtel, who has made a successful career painting Western history scenes.

``Would you teach me to paint?'' Costanza asked.

``No,'' Prechtel said.

``So how am I going to learn how to paint?''

``You have to learn to paint,'' Prechtel told him, ``by painting.''

Costanza set to work. He painted in his free time. He bought books about art. He began studying painters whose work interests him - not the trendy names of those showing in New York galleries but the painters, mostly here in the West, who look at the world around them and try to capture it on canvas. "I love being outside,'' he said. ``I spent most of my career on the street, out and about. In the alleys and down by the river. I see a nice landscape, I get really excited. Most people like landscape painting. You can hang one in your home and become friends with it. I find myself looking at a painting and taking a little vacation through the landscape.''

Learning to paint, he said, was the hardest thing he's ever done. By 1995 he was ready for his first public showing, which was held at the now-defunct Opus 5 gallery in Eugene. He's been represented in galleries since then, most recently by the Kneeland Gallery in Ketchum, the Mountain Trails Gallery in Jackson and the Greenhouse Gallery in San Antonio. He hardly bothers trying to sell in Eugene because, as many artists here will tell you, the art market in Eugene isn't very strong.

"A lot of art doesn't get sold here,'' he said. "It's an education process that it's OK for people to spend money on art and not just think of it as an investment. And it's OK to buy a local artist.''

Two years ago he took a leave from his job and eventually retired from the police department, motivated in part by the vagaries of the public employment retirement plan here in Oregon. Now he paints full time, putting in days that may range from six to 10 hours, in a two-car garage that has become his studio. With his canvases priced at up to $5,000, he isn't quite making a living at his work, but he's coming close. His work consists of big, straightforward but elegant oil paintings of Western landscapes. He does a lot of his work outdoors, often backpacking with friends into the Wyoming mountains for a week of drawing and painting.

Costanza said he quit art as a young man because he lacked discipline. The secret to art, he said, is ``just not quitting.''

"I was too flaky to be an artist,'' Costanza laughed. ``I didn't have the discipline when I was young to sit down and apply myself. Police work, having to toe the line for 25 years, taught me something.''

Jan. 9, 2005