Table of Contents
Return to New York (1938 - 1940)
Greenwich Village (I940 - 1950)
Trinidale: Country Living (1950 - 1959)
Return to Trinidad: Beauty and Horror Both (October 1959 - May 1960)
New York: Blossoming in the Nothingness of the City (May 1960 - March 1961)
Heaven: Trinidad a Scented Soft Couch (April 1961 - February 1962)
Retreat and Return (February 1962 - February 1964)
Resettling in New York (February 1964 - March 1967)
New Career: The Elmhurst Hospital (March 1967 - October 1972)
A Madison Avenue Gallery (November 1972 - April 1976)
“Kidnapped” and Sent to Trinidad (April 1972 - October 1977)
The Final Years (October 1977 - June 1982)
Trinidale: Country Living
1950 - 1959
Arthur did not particularly like living in New York City and he and Hugh decided they would move to the country. Arthur bought four acres of land in Shrub Oak in Westchester County (north of New York City). In about 1949 they built a garage, which served as a weekend get-away while the house was planned and built, a project which took six years. They named the property Trinidale a combination of Trinidad and Fort Lauderdale, Arthur's hometown.
The house was built in two stages with the first phase probably beginning in the summer of 1953. By the beginning of 1954, Arthur was living at Shrub Oak and working at the VA hospital, Hugh joined him on a full-time basis in the spring of that year. The second phase was begun in the spring of 1955 and fully enclosed by November.
Hugh and Arthur's relationship was never an easy one. Both men had mental health issues. Hugh was certainly bi-polar and Arthur may have been as well. Hugh, in a letter to Iona in 1956, described Arthur as "not merely paranoiac but manic-depressive." Hugh was very conscious of his financial dependence on Arthur and resented it, particularly when his obligation to keep house conflicted with his need to paint. Hugh could have a hair-trigger temper and the storm would not likely pass so quickly when the confrontation was with Arthur. Given the level of tension that Hugh repeatedly reported throughout the fifties, it is, in fact, incredible that the relationship lasted so long.
Hugh developed extensive gardens at Trinidale, which extended over the entire four-acre property and included a vegetable garden, fruit trees, berry bushes, grapes, flower gardens and flowering bushes and trees. At times he complained that the garden, plus his other chores, left little time for painting but, despite threats to curtail his gardening, there is little evidence that he did so. The gardens were undoubtedly not only a passion but also a refuge.
The subject matter for his painting shifted from tropical plants to the produce from his gardens. The change of subject matter was not the only change in his painting; he began to experiment with non-objective work. While this new interest reflects what was happening in New York painting at the time, with the birth of abstract expressionism in the late forties and its coming to prominence in the fifties, Hugh's approach was different. He was not interested in either the gestural approach to painting that we see in Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning or the soft-focus emotive colour fields of Mark Rothko. The large scale that characterized much of Abstract Expressionist work also did not attract him. Many of his works are small gouache studies which he, in some cases, enlarged to what for him would be mid-sized pictures. He was interested in painting that was an object of contemplation, rather than painting that verged on becoming an environment. While Hugh's work is different from the Abstract Expressionists, its roots as an expression of the unconscious is similar. He made it clear that his approach to the abstract work was very much an attempt to be guided by the unconscious. However, his interests were never singular and he would quickly move to definite subject matter where, as he put it, "conscious mastery" was dominant.
In April Hugh's parents celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary and Hugh, all his brothers and his sister attended the festivities. For the first time in more than 25 years, the senior Stollmeyers had all their children "home" at the same time. Hugh obviously enjoyed his two-week visit.
Coping with his own and Arthur's mental challenges left Hugh with little energy for the pursuit of his career as a painter beyond the basic production of the work. Even when things were going well for both himself and Arthur, which would have taken the pressure off his need for income, Hugh put his energy to other things that interested him more, such as his garden, rather than trying to market his work. However he did begin to exhibit perhaps for the first time since 1938. In 1957 he took part in an art exhibition in Peekskill. In 1958 he submitted four paintings to a show for unknown artists at the Whitney Museum. In May of 1959, through a contact of his niece, he met with Mrs. Mabel Brown at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park. This led to his inclusion in their 'Seven Lands' international exhibition, which was to take place in July. He also had an exhibition at an antique dealer's in Jefferson valley in August 1959.
