While Greeks used to invoke metaphysical (divine) beings to help them compose their literary masterpieces, writers like Philip Sidney found their muse in their hearts. The muse for painters lay in the beauty of the phenomenon observed. However, in Ted Hebbler's case, it was music that proved to be inspirational.
Hebbler was moved to pick up the painting brush by a famous but eccentric Jazz Artist, Charlie Ward (who, by the way, was also a painter). It was the Jazz musician's company in 90s that evoked his interest in the art of painting. According to Hebbler, it was over a couple of beer glasses and a few pool sessions at Stage Door that he got his starting lessons in painting.
Hebbler says that despite the fact that he learnt how to paint all by himself; it was music which helped him with his compositions. Having taken no formal lessons in art, his artistic style was raw. Music helped him find perfection in it.
Since then, claims Ted Hebbler, music has been the "tonic" that has helped him with his painting. Hebbler wakes to the sound of music and goes back to bed at night listening to music as well. He claims that on few occasions, he even slept to the sound of soft classical music running in the background. In short, music is like the air that he breathes. And though his influences are many and varied, he has been always painting to the vibrational rhythms of music.
Despite music being Hebbler's source of inspiration, it stays away from the soul of his painting. His paintings are still of the naturalistic type, depicting shades of nature that almost everyone amongst us might have experienced at some point of time or the other.
The seven years that he spent in the Caribbean provided him with most of the themes that he has painted. However, life lived in the United States of America also gets depicted in his paintings. In both the cases, the painter's contact with fellow human beings and the atmosphere around him can be seen in the form of use of colors, his interpretation of nature and how he captures its different mood.
Hebbler initially didn't get any commercial success as a painter. But he didn't care. He was successfully running two nuclear medicine laboratories and was financially taken care of that ways. Painting, thus, was only a method to give vent to the creativity inside him. Hence, he continued painting. But off late, he has found commercial success in that as well.
He returned to his native city of New Orleans to help in its rebuilding. Readers might be aware that it, along with numerous other cities of Florida, was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
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