The curtain's up in his artwork

Philadelphia Inquirer - October 20, 2002
by Joan Fairman Kanes/Inquirer Suburban Staff

This Villanova artist's next theater painting will be unveiled Nov. 1. At first glance, the Indiana Theater in Jimmy Stewart's hometown in western Pennsylvania didn't appear to be much more than a marquee on the side of a building.

But then Villanova artist George Rothacker put his imagination to work. In his painting, snow is falling outside the movie house where Stewart's It's a Wonderful Life is on the marquee and the bell from Bedford Falls is capturing the holiday spirit.
"My paintings are always a little romanticized,"Rothacker says. The painting, First Snowfall, will be unveiled Nov. 1, and a portion of the proceeds from prints and holiday cards will benefit the Jimmy

Stewart Museum.
The Indiana Theater is just the latest in a series of theaters that Rothacker has painted. He started 11 years ago after the Media Theater went dark, its fate uncertain. As the community rallied behind the theater, Rothacker, a former Media resident, "just started painting," hoping, he said, "this might be something that would inspire." Prints were sold, and the owner saw the vitality of the theater, which has since been restored and is now a performing-arts center, Rothacker said.

Rothacker has also painted the Anthony Wayne Theater on the Main Line, with The Philadelphia Story on the marquee; Doylestown's County Theater, showing Vertigo; and the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, where he grew up. His graduation from Upper Darby High School in 1965 was held at the Tower Theater.

The Upper Darby landmark is painted at night, its marquee glowing with Town Without Pity, with the headlights of '60s cars brightening the street.

At times, Rothacker, 55, just sees a theater that in Rivera Theater in Charleston, N.C.; an the Mayland Theater in Mayfield, Ohio.

His work is often used in a fund-raising effort based on sales of prints made from his paintings, At the Roxy Theater in Northampton, Pa., his painting helped raise money to restore a 1933 Wurlitzer organ.

For his latest project, Rothacker was familiar with the Jimmy Stewart Museum in Indiana because one of his daughters, Noelle, had attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Elizabeth Salome, executive director of the Jimmy Stewart Museum, was optimistic that Rothacker would undertake the project because three of his other theaters had Jimmy Stewart films on the marquee.

"I love the Hitchcock films," said Rothacker, who recalled seeing The Man Who Knew Too Much as a young boy in Upper Darby, which then boasted three movie houses.
"I've been painting since I was 20," said Rothacker, who studied engineering at Temple University but "hated" it. He took classes at Philadelphia College of Art in the 1970s. His portfolio included engineering and drafting work, as well as pastels and charcoals, which prompted an interviewer to ask if he wanted to be a draftsman or an artist.

He landed his first job as a technical illustrator at Clifton Precision. In 1978, he started his own firm, Rothacker Advertising & Design, now located outside Media.

Rothacker recently produced an annual report for First Keystone federal Bank in Media that includes paintings representing the areas in Delaware and Chester Counties where the bank has branch offices."It gave me an excuse to do six paintings," said Rothacker, who traveled the Chester County countryside in a hot-air balloon for one of the works that was designed to illustrate "the fine art of community banking."

In the 1970s, Rothacker's work included pen-and-ink fantasies based on historic times. In the 1980s, Rothacker designed the "Everybody's Hometown" logo for Media Borough.
For the last year or so, Rothacker, whose work has been featured in the Annual of the Society of Illustrators, Japanese Illustrators Annual and the Philadelphia Art Directors Show Book, has found inspiration in his own backyard.

"These are all done from life," Rothacker said of a current project, paintings of landmark homes an buildings in Radnor Township. He will spend three to Six hours to complete a scene in just one sitting, depicting the light just as he finds it. "I've painted all my life in acrylics," Rothacker said, and so his Pennsylvania impressionist paintings are also in acrylics.

He has sat on a rock for hours, painting without an easel—and, at times, having to fend off spiders or keep a dog from tramping through his paints—to capture his neighborhood's treasures: the restored Rador train station, his neighbor's tree-dappled house, an that interestingly shaped tree outside the Creutzberg Center offices of Main Line School Night.
Rothacker said his mother always told him that he couldn't make a living as an artist. But his mother was a fashion artist, and his father, "who was not supposed to be an artist," taught art to children at an Upper Darby library.

"Bering from that background, even though I went into engineering, I never psychologically had an alternative," Rothacker said.

George Rothacker's painting of the Anthony Wayne Theater is displayed behind him at Rothacker Advertising * Design, On the marquee in the painting is "The Philadelphia Story," a Jimmy Stewart film. His latest painting, of the Indiana Theater, will benefit the actor's museum.

Rothacker hoped his painting of the Media Theater "would inspire." It did. It helped reopen the theater.

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