Welcome to the work of Robert Jay Feuer, born in Brooklyn, New York in 1933. From his earliest years, Robert was recognized as the kid with the brush or the pen in hand, and that recognition would endure. Gentle, quiet, he rendered what he saw, and if he’d had his way, the scene would always have been pleasant: flowers reaching from a vase, the patterns deposited by a fresh snowfall, his adored wife, playful animal illustrations for his daughters, a horizon, his dogs. And since no one gets only pleasantness, he worked out his struggles through art as well.

Dad preferred painting with bright colors, and he would say that, in nature, no colors ever clash (which was a useful perspective to have as he dutifully applied to canvas every contrasting hue in a tube that struck his children's fancy as a birthday gift.) No pencil was still in his hands either. If it weren’t a broad sweep on a canvas, then it was a doodle on a pad.

Dad was not an artist by profession. He was a structural engineer, among the first on board to help building owners comply with New York City’s 1980 façade inspection and maintenance law, called Local law 10, which was passed in response to the tragic death of Grace Gold, a Barnard student who was struck by falling terra cotta from a high-rise building. 

Ms. Gold’s death affected our father profoundly, and making the reality of a walk down a New York street a safe and unremarkable event became an immediate mission for him. He hired additional employees to work in his basement office, and within a few years, as many as three of four scaffolds at an NYC intersection bore Dad’s name as project engineer.

Dad’s office’s expansion, while he continued to teach architecture courses, entailed tremendous responsibility and with that, stress. It was Mom in the mid-80s who suggested that Dad reclaim evening time with his art, and Dad heeded her advice (as was his wise lifelong habit.)

Dad did nothing halfway, and soon, by the early 90s, he was exhibiting and selling his works in Soho galleries and other local venues. Though sweet and friendly, Dad was introverted by nature. He only exhibited for a few years, but continued to paint and draw, sometimes selling pieces, sometimes donating to auctions for causes that were meaningful to him. He employed any medium that was handy: canvases, architectural bond and fabric scrolls, shirt carboards, hotel pads.

His work reflected history as it unfolded throughout his 83 years. On September 12, 2001, he raced into the city to check on his many clients’ downtown buildings within a stone’s throw of the World Trade Center. His attempts to process that vile day are here, as are his drawings to commemorate the tragedies of the Holocaust and our family’s personal losses. 

Our dad was deeply religious, with a respect for others’ ways that he held as deeply. He sketched renditions of psalms and holiday themes, the mournful and the joyous. He celebrated family and his friends with whimsical birthday cards, none so fantastic as those for my mother, which lined every inch of wall space in her long cedar closet. He created up until the end of his life.

Dad’s final five years were a struggle with what was probably Dementia with Lewy bodies. Yet despite an entire cognitive and physical decline, he never stopped drawing. Our Mom proudly displayed his later works aside the earlier ones as we do here.