"Trio" by Jerry Prettyman

"People ask me if I paint anything else," he said.

Not really -- though he'd like to get into other subjects, landscapes maybe.

Jazz music has always resonated with him, and so he's painted Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Mingus, Miles Davis -- more than 100 of Miles Davis.

The work, however, specifically the collection currently on exhibit at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center, is anything but monotonous. Prettyman's variations are endless; so much that "Jazz Around the World" could pass for a group show.

Prettyman has the ability to go from abstract mixed media to figurative charcoal to lino cut in one sweep -- or one wall -- while retaining his devotion to portray the kinship he's found with jazz.

He rarely paints without listening to jazz and said "music sets the tone. My work is very different when music is playing than it is without.

"Music is so important to me in creating," he continued. "I want the viewer to have that same feeling."

He began listening to jazz after ordering a rack of CDs through the mail from a music club -- "Kind of Blue," Ella, Sarah Vaughan -- "subliminally, I kind of knew who they were," he said. "And it really got me hooked. I really connected with it -- emotionally, psychologically, socially."

As he got older, he learned the history and politics behind the music, which took his understanding to another level. He began drawing all the legends and "never really got away from it."

His paintings weren't always so loose.

"I was an only child and my parents were military people," he said. "The art was like a companion for me ... like a sibling almost. It really evolved at an early age."

When he started (minus the years he spent drawing from Sunday comics as a little boy), Prettyman drew realistic pieces and said they were rather morbid and usually black and white.

"Everything seemed so one-dimensional," he said.

He was extremely detail-oriented in his work until about the mid-'80s.

"I took years trying to develop a style," he admitted. "I like all different kinds of art. I started experimenting with different techniques and styles."

He studied applied art and design at Catonsville Community College and Maryland Institute College of Art, and Fine Art at Morgan State University, and has since been a guest artist on local public radio and television programs; a lecturer, juror and curator for several exhibits; and his work has appeared in galleries, museums and public buildings throughout the United States.

A graphic designer for some 40 years (now 3 1/2 years retired), Prettyman wanted to incorporate that experience into his artwork.

He switched media frequently and "found that to be very illuminating," he said. "I didn't get locked in one place. ... Now I'm having a lot of fun producing work. Some pieces, you can get bogged down and it's like going to work. Now I set it down and go back to it."

He works mostly from photographs, sometimes his imagination.

"Miles at Pier Six #1" is based on a photograph Prettyman took in Baltimore during a Miles Davis show.

"Miles was so intense. He was a character," he said. "Music was his life. He was very prolific. He didn't have many friends. ... I'm trying to capture that intensity."

Prettyman said most of his musicians' lives were similar.

"To be a jazz musician, you almost had to be a drug addict."

He's moving in a new direction with some of his latest pieces done in bold strokes and brilliant colors, like "Billie's Blues," which abstractly depicts a black body of Billie Holiday with the quintessential white flower behind her ear, set against a backdrop that resembles a city block of buildings and a sky with a bright yellow sun.

"I'm trying to incorporate her significance as an artist, coupled with her lifestyle, and how all that went into her music."

Billie Holiday was on drugs, prostituted, was in abusive relationships, divorced, and "all that kind of came out in her music," Prettyman said, "kind of like her life being lived as an artist, rather than trying to sell something that (she) didn't experience."

Prettyman's own experiences, particularly his love for jazz, are evident and authentic.

"The jazz thing is a lifetime commitment to me," he said.

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www.jerryprettyman.com