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Portrait Of A Portrait Artist

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By PAUL CATALA

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 25, 2009

It was a life-changing event that led to a lifelong love affair with the arts and a stellar career as an artist.

Kings Point resident Charlie Bithorn has spent more than 50 years as a portrait artist, carefully painting friends, family, customers and notable people into acrylic and oil immortalized slices of time.

When he was a boy growing up in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Bithorn's mother took him to an artist friend's studio. There, the 8-year-old lad became entranced with the Renaissance-style portraits up on easels and lining the walls.

That infatuation blossomed into a formal art education and professional career. Over the years, Bithorn painted more than a thousand posed portraits, from everyday folks to the notable and sometimes notorious.

Bithorn, who's also an accomplished guitarist, still keeps busy painting in his home studio. Lining the walls of the home he shares with his wife Marie, is a visual record of a career that continues to produce.

A retired technical illustrator who moved to Sun City Center from Ormond Beach via New York City 15 years ago, Bithorn, 77, continues to break out the paints and turn brush strokes into lifelike images. In July, he completed an 8-inch by 10-inch oil painting of Fr. Joel Kovanis, who joined Prince of Peach Catholic Church.

"I enjoy doing portraits immensely. I've got so many 'thank-you's,' especially from people who lost loved ones," said Bithorn, who had the first exhibition of his works at age 10. "When I do portraits for them, they tell me the painting I did is so alive."

Over the years, Bithorn has painted from both live models and from photographs, his preferred method. Among his subjects have been clergy and business people; judicial professionals, like the judges of Nassau County, N.Y.; and sports stars, like former car ledgend Dale Earnhardt.

Some of his paintings have been of more notorious folk. In the 1960s, he was asked to do a portrait of a young, democracy-promising Fidel Castro, which still hangs in a Havana government building.

"A friend worked for Castro and asked me to do a painting. I did one from a photo and the friend took it back to Cuba. It's still there," said Bithorn.

Bithorn's first exhibit was at age 10 in San Juan and at 12 years old, his father, Jose Mejia-Bithorn, moved the family to New York City. There, Bithorn went to a music and art high school, where he perfected his skills.
Bithorn married Marie Gonzalez in 1951 in New York City before a stint with the U.S. Army during the Korean War.

Following the war, Bithorn -- who has a daughter and three sons, one of whom, Joey, portrays George Harrison in the internationally-known Beatles' tribute act, "Rain," -- studied art at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, while working for General Motors. He soon got work with advertising agencies and newspapers as an illustrator, before working for 25 years as an art director for a pharmaceutical firm. He retired from there in 1996.

But retirement from a 9-to-5 job for Bithorn didn't mean putting away the brushes. After his stint as an art director, he has worked as an art teacher and joined musical choruses and groups as a guitarist, currently performing as a duo with Marie and with a jazz combo, "Pops...Yesterdays" at local Sun City Center functions and events.
Bithorn said he generally produces two paintings per month, depending on the number of requests he gets. Since retiring, he has stayed active in the visual arts, having painted over 1,000 portraits in Sun City Center, New York City, Ormond Beach and countries around the world.

One of those portraits hangs in the home of a Sun City couple -- a housewarming gift to them from local Re-Max Universal Realty real estate broker Simone Baillergeon.

Baillergeon commissioned a portrait of them for their new place. Using a photograph of the couple on a cruise ship, Bithorn painted a 2-by-3-foot oil painting for a wall in the new home.

"I knew that would be the perfect housewarming gift," said Baillergeon. "It's beautiful. It's amazing how he took a little picture and then enlarged it into the painting and kept everything perfectly to scale."

Besides local owners of Bithorn's works, his peers also praise the artist's skill and dexterity.

Betty Renner, who's painted professionally in various mediums for the past 40 years, said Bithorn is an outstanding realist artist in detail and color. A member of the Kings Point Arts League and award-winning artist, she said his formal art education shines through in his works.

"He certainly has all the skills and he's had a lot of good teachers. All of his paintings are detailed and very accurate," she said. "There's something in his work that gives it a real lifelike quality."
Bithorn generally charges from $150 to $500 per portrait, although customer and personal satisfaction are the real payoffs.

"I'll keep on going with this for as long as I can. It's fun for me and people like what I do and think so much of the paintings," he said. "To me, I'm grateful to know people are so fond of my paintings,"

Reporter Paul Catala can be reached at (813) 865-1554 or pcatala@mediageneral.com

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