Finding Inspiration in Every Turn
Selected quotes from Archives of American Art/Smithsonian Institution, oral history interview of Donald Totten by Betty Hoag on May 28, 1964.
“I was born in Vermillion, South Dakota in 1903…and lived [there] until my senior year of high school.”
Totten family seed corn business, Vermillion, S.D.
“I went to SC [i.e., University of Southern California] for one year and was drawing all over my notebooks and nobody had ever heard of an artist in South Dakota….I had cartooning in the back of my head…Colleges in those days didn’t offer the art courses that they do now. So, I convinced my family that …to better my artistic training I’d better get in an art school [Otis Art Institute]. I still had the idea that perhaps I’d become a cartoonist. But I only had to be exposed to seeing painters around…[for] two or three months before I dropped the commercial art, and I’ve been a fine artist ever since."
Don, on left, with two other Otis Art Institute students.
Federal Art Project painting inspired by photo, location unknown
“It wasn’t until the middle of the late ‘20s that I heard about the Los Angeles Art Students’ League. Stanton MacDonald-Wright was teaching there at the time…and not very long after…Loser Feitelson came to town and they brought the gospel from Europe, the gospel of Modern Painting. Of course, I was completely sold on the League."
“[The Compton Post Office] was the first job I had with the [Federal] Art Project.... I was an apprentice on this job…It was something like the kind of training the old masters had…I did all the odd jobs. I did carpenter work, and one thing and another, and learned by being around the stuff. I think this is one of the things I miss in teaching in colleges today. I wish more youngsters could have the opportunity to live, eat and breathe paint from morning to night as we did, so that it becomes a part of you."
Los Angeles Times, August 12, 1937
“I’m still painting big painting as you can see….[I] never got away from this. I got used to working large and I like to paint murals, this is what I do. You might think of them as “portable murals.”
Oakland Tribune, 1953
In 1950, a studio was built at the Totten residence on Hoover Street in Los Angeles. The structure was built to meet the needs of a painter, all windows faced North, the ceiling was high, the work space large, and special extra tall double doors were constructed to accommodate large canvases.
Don Totten studio exterior and interior, ca. 1950
The 1950s and early 1960s were Don’s most productive years. He painted continuously, while also teaching, and exhibiting frequently. His work was well reviewed. For instance, Henry Seldis, the art editor for the Los Angeles Times, said on January 12, 1962, in an article titled "Artist Succeeds in Quest for Own Style": “Donald Totten’s Paul Plummer Gallery exhibition is the best show to date offered by this gallery. His semi-abstract comments on landscape themes have become quite assured. The best of them are memorable for their palette and composition. It may well be that this young artist is about to find a style distinctive enough to put him among our leading artist.”
In 1960, Thomas W. Leavitt (1930-2010), the pioneering director of the Pasadena Art Museum included Don in a three-artist exhibition. In 1964, Leavitt; who by then was director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, gave Don a solo exhibit there. A letter in Don’s papers from Walter Hopps (1932-2005), Leavitt’s successor at Pasadena, reveals that Don was exploring further opportunities in Pasadena after the conclusion of the Santa Barbara exhibit. Sadly, during the run of the show Don (age 60) suffered a massive stoke; thus ending his painting career. His work has basically been in storage ever since.
On Painting
“My more immediate aims have been arrived at through chance, trial and error and instinct. It was by such means that I finally found out that expressing myself through painting was important to me. So it has been very necessary that I paint and keep on painting.”
D.T. papers, essay titled. “My Philosophy” dated March 2, 1957
“I still think of painting today as the art of using color in space. I am increasingly aware of the necessity of limitations, of letting the symbol or the hint generate further creative activity in the sensitive spectator.”
D.T. papers, exhibition mailer from Paul Plummer Galleries, January 1962
"In great painting one finds two elements existing side by side almost to the point of paradox. These are the reality of what one sees & what one knows. The first is a faithful rendering of the model. The second is an ideal proposition which paints things, changing them in such a way that they represent our ideas of things instead of the painting being a. . . mirror of nature."
D.T. papers, “Outline for Painting Class”
"My painting is abstract in the sense that it is not intended to look like the forms and shapes in our everyday experience. It is concrete in the sense that it is essentially “about” what it really is — the ordered arrangement in a unique design."
"Rather than starting from a particular model, these paintings are “keyed” in relation to a particular experience, whether that experience be about landscape, mood, the seasons, a musical theme, improvisation, or anything else."
"Most painters do a sorry job when it comes to talking about their own painting. The expression is a visual one, and the attempt to make logical what has been essentially an illogical process becomes well-nigh impossible, most especially for the performer."
D.T. papers, lecture titled “Painting in the 20th Century”
"We all have times when we are particularly aware of something greater than our ego-selves,…I have prized these more lucid moments. I realize that if we can fulfill the conditions of simplicity, poverty of sprit and purity of heart, we can realize our inmost selves."
D.T. papers dated March 30, 1957
