By Ilene Dube
In retirement, ex-freeholder makes a name as a painter
Joseph Tighue always wondered when he’d feel comfortable calling himself an artist.
The 82-year old has been painting for more years than his career in real estate and politics. But it wasn’t until the Hamilton resident won the top prize in the county and state senior art shows, he finally feels ready for the title of “artist.”
His painting of the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City won first place in the non-professional acrylic painting category in the Mercer County Office on Aging Art Show in July, then won the New Jersey Senior Citizen Art Show in October, besting several hundred works of art.
The Trenton native, who served as a Mercer County freeholder from 1969-1979 and as county surrogate and judge of the probate court from 1980-1990, started Tighue Better Homes and Gardens at the Five Points in Mercerville in 1960. When converting a residential building into offices, he wanted to hang paintings of buildings, but couldn’t find any he both liked and could afford.
“So I tried it myself,” he said, while giving a tour of the spacious home he shares with his wife, Marie, in the Enchantment development. “I bought canvases and supplies and painted. When they were hung, an officer from the Mercerville firehouse came over and asked who did it. He was active in the Hamilton Art Group in the firehouse across the street, and he suggested I put something in their show.”
Tighue entered two works of art and both won prizes. It motivated him to do more.
He joined the Hamilton Art Group, and took lessons, but the more lessons he took, the less he liked his paintings.
“They didn’t have the loose feeling I wanted,” he said. “So I dropped out, learning to accomplish what I wanted through trial and error.”
Paintings done in the 1960s were cityscapes of Trenton, and New York, including Times Square at night, with reflections sparkling like jewels. He painted the Brooklyn Bridge, noting its connection to his home city. Roebling Wireworks in Trenton is where the bridge was designed.
When a real estate convention took him to San Francisco, Tighue painted the city and its cable cars (also made from Roebling wire). The paintings were exhibited in the offices of the Trentonian newspaper for 10 years. Tighue had an offer to purchase one but he liked it too much to sell.
The son of a door-to-door salesman and a telephone operator, Tighue had taken an art class in high school. At Halloween, he and a friend painted windows in downtown Trenton. (The friend went on to become a scenic designer for CBS.)
Tighue’s art education continued in the form of going to art shows and talking to artists as they painted, picking up ideas for technique. He also reads books about painting.
“Every time I paint, it’s a learning experience,” he said. “I may come back to it a year later. I will rework it until the color is right.”
As a real estate appraiser, Tighue worked on properties for Greenacres Preservation and Farmland Preservation.
“Walking the properties, I’d see interesting streams and reflections of trees and sun that you’d never see from the road,” he said. “I’d meet the farmer early in the morning and have an interesting time. I’d take lots of photos for the appraisal and used them (as reference material) for my paintings.”
Tighue (pronounced “tie”) has had the good fortune to live in places where the scenery is what he likes to paint. He and Marie lived in Brigantine for 16 years after his retirement from real estate. There, he painted the Atlantic City skyline, which he could see from his deck. The couple spends four months of the year in a high-rise overlooking the ocean in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where Tighue sets up an easel on the balcony or deck.
“I only paint where my wife lets me,” he said, with a smile.
In early 2014, when the Tighues moved into Enchantment, Tighue finally had a room for his studio. He also uses an upstairs closet to store his paintings. The storage problem is solved by giving away many paintings, although he painted specifically for a son’s home in Robbinsville. (Tighue also has a daughter in Chesterfield and a son in Cherry Hill.)
In the Tighues’ dining room, there’s a painting of a sunset. There is another painting in the sunroom, but it’s in the garage where you can find many more of Tighue’s paintings, hung salon style.
“My wife doesn’t like clutter, she likes simplicity. Too much of a good thing is too much for her,” he says. “If a painting is hung, it has to be something you’re not going to notice. It has to go with the décor.
“Marie is a good critic. She has an eye, and I’ll make changes based on her comments.”
Among the paintings stowed in his closet is one of a bridge over turquoise water with waterlilies, albeit at a golf course, that makes a viewer think of Claude Monet, the artist Tighue said he likes the most.
Although he works from photographs, Tighue enhances reality, using an impressionistic technique. He makes a house look like a chateau. In another, he uses actual sand to add texture to a dune. A still life shows two wine glasses and four bottles with labels that are landscape paintings. He likes blues and greens, but knows how to give accent with reds and yellows.
“I like the colors of the fall,” he said.
While working in real estate, Tighue would give paintings to builders, sort of like a calling card. They’d hang the paintings and then think of him when they had a building to sell.
When his business was growing, Tighue had no time to make art.
“We had 100 agents, and offices in Ewing, Princeton and West Windsor,” he said. “Then, I ran for freeholder, won, got re-elected, served for nine years, then as County Surrogate for 10 years.”
Marie was running the real estate company, and his sons were running the appraisal side of the business while Tighue traveled as dean of the New Jersey Realtors Institute.
Among the accomplishments he’s most proud of during his political career is helping to start a work release program for inmates, “giving them a better shot at making it and helping their families stay off welfare. It got them training as they worked on rehabilitating city houses.” He also started a residential rehab program for drug offenders, fixing up a run-down motel near the Trenton train station, and a methadone program in a former bus terminal on Perry Street.
Tighue served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, giving him a chance to travel throughout Europe and see great works of art. When he returned in 1954, he worked for a local realtor and enrolled at Rider University under the G.I. Bill. A professor offered him a job as an appraiser, and for a while Tighue worked while going to school, then opened his own company.
He got his start in politics by helping to register voters and campaigning for candidates. When Gov. Richard Hughes was running for his first term, Tighue was named chairman of the Mercer for Hughes campaign. When the campaign succeeded, Tighue volunteered to be a driver for Bobby Kennedy during the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. He had a large Cadillac he used in his real estate business, and it was the perfect vehicle for driving the U.S. Attorney General.
“For two or three days I drove him everywhere,” Tighue said. “I would wait outside the car. Everyone wanted to get a glimpse. He’d jump on top of the car, and give a rally speech to the crowd.”
Even though this was a year after JFK’s assassination, security was lax.
“Bobby was out there with the people,” Tighue said. “He didn’t want security.”
As the 50th anniversary of the 1964 convention was approaching, Tighue realized he’d always wanted to do that painting.
“It was a very significant event in my life,” he said. “It was the only national political convention ever held in New Jersey. The building itself fascinated me, built in 1920 with no beams to obstruct the view.”
The painting shows Jackie Kennedy dressed in white with a pill box hat and Ethel Kennedy dressed in blue. They are standing in the box draped with the pleated American flag bunting, overlooking the crowds holding up banners for Johnson and Humphrey. Tighue referred to Life, Look and other magazines he’d saved, as well as photographs he’d taken at the convention.
“I wanted to get the mood with the lights, the balloons and signs and the curved beams,” he said.
He found pictures of LBJ, Humphrey and Gov. Hughes that had been used at the convention, sized them accordingly and collaged them onto the painting.
On his easel today is a painting of a scene under the boardwalk. He’s not working from life or a photograph, but from imagination. There’s an amusement park at sunset, and the water, painted with a palette knife, looks like it’s moving.
Tighue is ready to take on more challenging subjects, connecting to his wealth of knowledge of state history.
“I never expected to win first place in the county, let alone the state,” he said. “It’s motivated me to paint more. I feel like I’m starting my painting career in earnest. I think I can call myself an artist now.”
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