Stephen Roka

If artist Steve Roka, 90,  has one regret, it’s about a watercolor painting he let get away. He was on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, painting a scene of a two-car ferry boat. He recalls having one-third of the watercolor down when a shadow crossed his paper.
“You selling that?” said a man.
“I haven’t made up my mind,” replied Roka.
“I’m going to church now. Here’s my address. Where are you going to be?”
At 1 o’clock the man appeared at the restaurant where Roka was eating crab cakes. “He wanted to see the painting. I got it out of the trunk of my car. He handed me a check and told me to put my price on it. He caught me flat-footed. I charged $80, unframed. I’ve been sorry every since.”

Roka has no regrets, however, about his years teaching art to elementary and junior high students in Oxford. What began as a favor turned out to be a career move with life-changing consequences.

During WWII Roka served as a Navy pilot, covering the Atlantic Fleet from Iceland to Rio. After the war he went back to college to  complete his BS in Art Supervision and Art Education at Kutztown State Teachers College. A year later he earned a Master in Fine Arts at Columbia University. Jobless, highly qualified, but lacking experience, he stopped to say good-bye to his former Kutztown mentor. “I told him I was going to Texas to paint pictures of Texas millionaires,” Roka said. “He asked me to do him a favor. ‘Go to Oxford. I told them I’d sent them an art teacher. You don’t have to take the job. Just go.’”
Roka met with the supervisor and later accepted the job when the school board surprisingly agreed to pay him $2800.  “I intended to stay a year,” he said. “They wouldn’t see my dust. I’d be out of there in a hurry.” One year quickly became four. Roka joined the Rotary Club and met local artist Charles X. Carlson. Soon after, he met his future wife Florence Bolton, a first grade teacher at the Oxford School.
The son of strict Hungarian immigrant parents, who taught him not to blow his own horn, Roka responded to Carlson’s free spirit and zest of living. “Charlie became a second father to me. I gravitated to the guy,” explained Roka. “He told me, ‘Do what you want without worrying what people think.  Let people come to understand you.’” Carlson mentored Roka on many levels. “Charlie showed everything and explained why. He talked to me like a father, gave me all the poop I needed. He laid all his talents open and taught me. I liked that. I had a lot to learn.”

Going out to paint became a Sunday morning ritual for the two artists whose friendship spanned 44 years until Carlson’s death at 89 in 1991. “My wife went to church while I was communing with God in the fields,” said Roka. The artists’ plein air excursions typically began with coffee and cheesecake at Carlson’s house. “Then we’d get in his car and go. There was never a question in his mind about where to go. We’d be home by noon.”

A studio painter before he met Carlson, Roka loved painting outdoors where he was free to move around and make choices about what to paint. “Charlie taught me to be very fast and how to make a painting from nothing. He taught me how to see things. He’d say observe the subject, decide what you want to put in it then put it down. Charlie did a watercolor in a half hour. It took me 50 minutes. Once he gave me hell for putting in a pencil line,” said Roka, laughing.
Though he never intended to earn a living from painting, Roka has met success. “As an artist, you want to be recognized to see if it does sell. So I would let a few of them go, about 50-60, just to give me the confidence that people liked my work.” What about the hundreds of paintings and sketches he has stocked away? He attributes his inclination to hold  on to  things, including 95% of his paintings, to his romantic nature. “My paintings remind me of experiences in my life.”

On the cusp of his 91 birthday, Roka finds it more “laborious” to pack up his car and go. Yet weather cooperating, he paints en plein air Thursday mornings with members of the Octoraro Art Association. Painting with others, he says, motivates him. He enjoys the banter and exchange of thoughts and ideas. A watercolor painting begins with Roka’s artistic response to a place. He scouts for the angle, for what in a scene catches his eye and imagination.
Then he’ll locate a place to sit in the shade. “The sun on white paper is blinding,” he said. Roka makes a preliminary sketch on drawing paper to work out proportions and sometimes alter the subject to fit a vertical or horizontal format. Next, conscious of composition and perspective,  he makes a pencil sketch on a large sheet of watercolor paper.

Assembling his paints within reach, the artist settles down to work. “I stay put for a half hour to an hour, long enough to get the basic structures down. If I get up and move around, I lose my mental state.” He cautions plein air painters not to get bogged down in details. Paint quickly with bold contrasting colors, using the side of the brush. Roka paints to capture a mood, as well as a moment in time.

Steve Roka has always prided himself on being inventive and expressing his creativity. “I discovered early on that once you get satisfied, you’re finished. I try to do something different. Art gives you a sense of purpose. I know it keeps me occupied in old age. I think a sense of purpose is important at any age.”