The closest Anthony Gartmond came to creating art during his 25 years as an Essex County assistant prosecutor was doodling during meetings.
So, it is no small feat that seven years into retirement, Gartmond has achieved a measure of success as an artist and that his work is being featured all month in a virtual art gallery on the New Jersey State Bar Association (NJSBA) website as part of the Minorities in the Profession Section Black History Month celebration on Feb. 25.
To be sure, Gartmond’s talents did not come out of left field. He showed artistic promise in his youth, particularly in his pencil drawings, and was encouraged by teachers to keep at it. But he gave it up to pursue a more practical career in law.
“My mother told me I would starve as an artist,” he recalled. Gartmond believes that prior to retirement, the last time he did any serious drawing was as an undergraduate at Rutgers University in Newark.
“From then on, it pretty much was doodling and focusing on developing a legal career,” he said.
After graduating from Rutgers Law School in Newark, he worked as an investigator for two New York City agencies for several years before returning to East Orange, where he briefly practiced with the law firm of Eldridge Hawkins. He joined the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office in 1988.
Gartmond’s long-dormant passion for graphite drawing was serendipitously reawakened in 2014, when, shortly after retiring, he attended a Princeton University Art Museum exhibit of drawings by some of the great Renaissance masters.
“While viewing these pencil drawings an urge began welling up in me. I was connecting intrinsically with these art pieces,” he said.
As Gartmond left the exhibit, he passed a notice about drawing classes being offered and decided to reacquaint himself with the basics.
“I began drawing more and more pieces, once again becoming comfortable with the activity,” he said.
Gartmond’s avocation began to take off in 2016, when drawings of jazz artists that he posted on Facebook attracted the attention of Newark’s jazz station, WBGO, which later displayed them in its art gallery. Soon other galleries and outlets in the region began showing his work, including Art in the Atrium in Morristown, the largest African American art show in the state.
Employing a style of graphite pencil drawing known as hyper-realism, Gartmond’s work reveals a lushness, subtlety and dimension through the interplay of light and shadow. He favors depicting human subjects in various settings, including jazz musicians, historic figures and “whatever inspires me at that moment.”
Gartmond’s show on the NJSBA website features drawings that depict musicians such as Herbie Hancock, Cassandra Wilson and Prince. Others are renderings of cityscapes; scenes from the 1950s and people in moments of repose, intimacy and celebration. Another depicts a famous photo of President Lyndon B. Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr.
The MIPS Black History Month art show can be viewed at njsba.com through Feb. 28.