It’s 36 degrees on a February afternoon, and Provincetown painter Jim Broussard is standing with his easel on Tremont Street next to a melting pile of snow. “I got my ski boots, ski pants, long johns, layers and layers on,” says Broussard. He’s mapping out a sketch using a brush in his gloved right hand. He uses a towel to hold five more brushes with his left hand.
Broussard uses oil paint on linen or canvas with a combination of thin and thicker layers. “I like to paint in thinner layers and put a lot of medium in it so it glows when the light hits it,” he says. “I draw a little, but I find it takes the spontaneity and joy out of my painting if it’s too studied.”
He takes about 30 minutes to get a sketch done before he starts painting. “I’m going to give myself an hour and 15 minutes to lay in the color because the light’s going to change real fast.”
Sixty-seven cents would get 12-year-old Jim Broussard and his buddy, Don, into Manhattan’s Greenwich Village from Montvale, N.J. “Things were a lot more laid back then,” he says. “We were in sixth grade looking at Rollerina skate her way around the village. Woodstock days — you could crash at people’s houses.”
His father was a professional illustrator. A graphite drawing he made of Broussard is clamped onto a shelf in his studio. Both parents understood their son was a wanderer. He was indefinitely suspended for skipping school at 15 and dropped out at 16. “Being gay in North Jersey was untenable,” he says.
He hitchhiked to Provincetown in the summer of 1970. “It was the beginning of the gay revolution, and Provincetown was the safest place on Earth,” he says.
The following summer, Broussard worked for Joy McNulty’s first restaurant, J’s Port of Call. “That part of my life has nothing to do with my painting — it’s just how I got here,” he says. He got a bed in a cottage on Conwell Street for $25 a week.
Although his father was an illustrator, Broussard had little interest in painting when he was growing up. When he was 20, he got a job as a server at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston. One day, during a break between shifts, he saw a posting for adult education art classes outside the mansion across the street. The following Thursday, he arrived at the Boston Center for Adult Education and drew a conch shell for three hours.
Broussard got his GED, enrolled in art courses at Boston State College for two semesters, and then transferred to the Mass. College of Art and Design. Eventually, he quit school again but maintained his studio. “School taught me just to keep painting,” he says, “which is what I did. That was my foundation.” He knew he wanted to come back to Provincetown to paint more than he wanted to return to his family in New Jersey. “This was home,” he says.
Broussard painted on the side of the old Herring Cove bathhouse before it was demolished. It was part of Jay Critchley’s multi-media exhibition, “Ten Days That Shook the World: the Centennial Decade,” in 2012. Critchley says the event had 50 creatives doing 30 events in 10 days.
“The shower rooms on each side were open to the sky — all these artists came into the space,” says Critchley. “Jim came and painted this painting on the outside of the building.” In December Broussard asked Critchley if he wanted the painting. “It was on concrete and steel mesh,” says Critchley. “I had no idea anyone had cut the painting out.” Now it hangs in his backyard “theme park.”
Back in the studio, Broussard is examining some of his work for a show. “I get snowed on, I get rained on,” says Broussard of his plein-air winter process.
In After the Storm, an oil on canvas, Broussard’s pleasure in the bare winter landscape shines through. Snow reflects the color of the surrounding town. A familiar white house at the bend in Commercial Street blends into snow. Reflections of green from its shutters land on the side of the house and the snowy street around it. The yellow rectangle of a street sign brings a splash of color to the piece. Strokes of rose find their way into the quiet street and onto the lines of parking signs.
In January Harvest, another oil on canvas painted this year, we are presented with a spectacular view of the breakwater and the barren marshes at low tide. But winter doesn’t look stark here — it’s full of life, and colorful figures working through it. One clammer braves the breakwater with a shovel. For this painting, Broussard backed up to the walkway at the Provincetown Inn.
In Bare Tree, an oil on linen, winter has hollowed out a row of hedges making the neighboring yard visible. The bare tree looms and joins in — peeking into the neighbor’s yard. Even with no leaves on the trees, Broussard’s greens bring a lushness to winter. He has broken up the canvas in thirds, with the bare tree crossing the upper two sections of the piece. Rooftops in the distance provide shape and depth to the work, while distant windows remained closed until spring.
Broussard’s paintings can be seen at the Alden Gallery in Provincetown, which is currently open by appointment; email [email protected] or call 646-483-8164.
