By Mark Bialczak

LPL Communications Specialist

John Mariani didn’t consider feeding the artistic side of his personality until he woke up one morning at the age of 55 and couldn’t lift his left arm higher than his shoulder.

“I thought I had a stroke or something,” he recalled.

Twelve hours of testing at St. Joe’s revealed the need for disc surgery.

Mariani missed two months from his job in the newsroom of The Post-Standard/Syracuse.com, and found himself attracted to PBS painting shows with Bob Ross and Jerry Arnell.

“They’d produce a masterpiece in a 30-minute show, and in a drug-induced haze, I’d say, ‘I can do that,’” he recalled.

Then he drove to the store and bought some supplies.

“Acrylics, water-based. I didn’t want to make too much of a mess to clean up. I’d go to the Erie Canal Park and take photos, and follow along with Bob Ross, paint the pictures I took,” Mariani said. “People liked what I was doing. It was encouraging.”

Fast-forward three years, and a subsequent retirement from that journalism career. At first Mariani thought he’d drive cab.

Then he posted a photo of a painting of the Skaneateles waterfront he’d given to his daughter, Rose, on Facebook.

His friend Stephanie Gibbs, an attorney who used to live in Skaneateles who’d moved to North Carolina, commissioned him to paint another for him.

“The rest, as they say, is history,” Mariani said. More than a dozen paintings sold, in fact.

Mariani’s work is hanging on the walls of the LPL lobby throughout November in the exhibit “From Keyboard to Canvas: The Writer Becomes an Artist.”

He’ll meet and greet patrons in the lobby from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 5. Light refreshments will be served.