Front Porch, a non-profit organization which operates retirement, active adult living, skilled nursing and affordable housing communities, is publishing a 2007 calendar featuring porch paintings by Robert Selkowitz. Front Porch represents Robert’s combined interests in arts and healthcare and communities of aspiration.
Based in Burbank, California, with communities located in California, Louisiana, Arizona and Florida, Front Porch views the pursuit of happiness and human dignity as central to the fabric of its communities.

2007 Calendar is SOLD OUT

2007 Calendar "On the Front Porch" features 12 veranda paintings including Chautauqua, Cape May and Ashokan & offers a full size 12x12 inch glossy format with large day blocks for writing notes.

• 1 calendar + shipping = $15.00

How to Order Front Porch Calendar

• Please pay by check.
• Calendar, notecard and address book orders can be combined.
• Contact the artist for shipping/handling of combined orders.
  1.Indicate by title which item(s) you would like to order.
  2.Total the amount. New York State residents should add 8% Sales Tax.
  3. Make your check payable to Robert Selkowitz.
  4. Mail to:
  Robert Selkowitz
  3024 STATE ROUTE 28
  SHOKAN, New York 12481

Selkowitz on Front Porch

I have been creating painting using porches and verandas as settings for the compositions for about 25 years. They had a universal appeal and people bought them for their homes and offices. I chose the compositions because there was an aspect that arrested my attention, there was a beauty I felt that could be translated to a painting and felt by the viewer. After painting about 65 works based in the Historic District of Cape May, New Jersey, I discovered Chautauqua, New York, and a new chapter opened for me. I began to study the philosophy of the architecture that created these settings and found expressions of these sentiments in the books of Andrew Jackson Downing, an architect and landscape architect who lived in the Hudson Valley of New York in the mid-1800s. (more) My background of interest in community as a setting for my art makes this project with FRONT PORCH a homecoming.

The 19th century English critic John Ruskin said: The purpose of architecture is to raise men’s spirits. The front porch is an expression of that ideal. It offers the example of social and architectural interaction which creates an inspiring, warm hearted environment. When joined in community with others, it can inspire emotional responses in human beings which are uplifting.

According to the dictionary, porch and veranda define each other, a room or covered entrance attached to, but outside, a building. One feels that a veranda is an expansive porch.
Porches and verandas are mediating spaces where home meets lane and conversations are welcome, rocking chairs beckon and friendships nurtured. These settings are meaningful cradles for human contact and repose. They are also restorative places where individual human beings can enjoy the view and replenish the soul. A rocker on the porch offers a sympathetic vantage point on a corner of creation, a place to fall in love with the world.
The porch or veranda was a conscious expression in domestic architecture of the human desire to relish life during a period in our history when leisure and ease were valued, it is an architectural element which sustains our humanity.
Andrew Jackson Downing, in his 1850 book Architecture of Country Houses, makes several illuminating references to the veranda ( or porch), architecture, and its spiritual and moral significance. Downing wrote:
The larger expression of domestic enjoyment is conveyed by the verandah…a verandah is a positive luxury in all the warmer part of the year, since in mid-summer it is the resting-place, lounging-spot, and place of social resort, of the whole family…there are few greater luxuries in a country house in an American summer…than such a cool and airy verandah – especially if it looks out upon our fine river or lake scenery.
While these thought were written more than 150 years ago, they are still relevant today. The porch, as a resting place, does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in the same brew of social and personal concerns it always has, that is why it retains its value. The porch or veranda is an archetypal psychic resting place. Beyond the necessities of shelter, it represents the principle embellishment of an abode for the sake of rest, relaxation and pure enjoyment of living.
The great French painter Henri Matisse wrote:
What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject- matter, an art which might be for every mental worker, be he businessman or writer, like an appeasing influence, like a mental soother, something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.
This has been my artistic ideal. The porch or veranda has been my motif because of its emotional associations which further my aesthetic goal. My paintings embody a restorative experience which is communicated to the viewer. Porches are sanctuaries, and my paintings become sanctuaries so that the spirit rises and burdens are lightened when relaxing in their atmosphere.