Gary Burghoff uses stardom to promote environmental
issues
Television and movie star Gary Burghoff is made of a
lot more than Hollywood hype. He’s a committed Christian outspoken on issues of
social concern and an eloquent spokesperson for the natural environment.
The man known to millions as Corporal Radar O’Reilly
in the movie and television series M*A*S*H is also an accomplished
nature artist. He currently has an exhibit at the Fenwick Gallery of
Fine Art in Waterville as part of a cross-country tour from Northern
California to Connecticut.
“We have 200 percent more forest [in Connecticut]
than we had a hundred years ago,” Burghoff said at a press conference
at the gallery on Friday. “These things should be reported along with
the doomsday prophecies that we hear so many times. People should not be
discouraged in trying to conserve and improve the environment.”
Burghoff has personally seen some of the improvements
he spoke of.
“Now we are actually having black bear and moose
return—and by the way, they are returning naturally to Connecticut.
Also, species like coyote, river otters… red fox, silver fox, bald
eagles, our national bird, all of these species and many, many more….
And I see this happening in Ohio as well.”
Burghoff’s list contains the same species he features
in his paintings. “Features” isn’t quite the right word, however,
for his animal subjects are more than that—Burghoff seems to share a
genuine connection with them, which comes across on canvas.
One series of Burghoff’s paintings is titled “Eye to
Eye” because he paints the animals in close-up, giving them a sense of
presence normally reserved for human beings.
“What I try to do in my artwork is to show that
every single animal, not just every single species but every single
animal, has a personality of its own,” Burghoff said.
Of nature’s comeback after the environmental disasters
of the sixties and seventies, he said, “It’s just incredible. And this
is the kind of thing that only happens when people become aware that the
environment is an asset to their lives, that natural beauty is important
to the quality of our daily lives. It is a self-perpetuating thing: When
we realize the value of nature, we stop destroying it.”
Burghoff believes such awareness comes through
education, not political action, though he acknowledged the necessity of
some environmental laws. His main concern with environmentalism as a
political movement is that he feels it often doesn’t spring from that
which it protects.
“I’ve seen too often where conservation takes the
form of separating people from the environment, separating them,”
Burghoff said. “If we do that, we’re going to have a generation of
people who are so ignorant of the environment that we’re going to have
more environmental problems within twenty years. People should be
connected to the environment.
“One of the joys that I have is painting wildlife,
which is the result of my connection to the environment. When I left
M*A*S*H in 1979 I went straight to the woods, straight to the natural
world that I loved growing up in my home states of Connecticut and
Wisconsin. There was a hunger in me to get connected again.”
He later observed, “I’m just delighted that people
through viewing my artwork can share the simple joy—the simple pleasure
and the rather profound love that I think we share together—of the
environment, and wanting to see it flourish. Human beings are not
separate from the environment.”
While freely admitting he lives his faith as a
Christian, Burghoff concedes Darwin was right on adaptation and natural
selection. Still, he is “opposed to any religion or science that
becomes dogmatic, and inasmuch as Darwinism has become, in a way, one of
the dogmatic religions of our time… I feel that as an individual I
have to speak out, in the same way I would speak out against [any]
dogmatic religion that would alienate other human beings.”
Helping human beings provides another motivation for
him to work. At a special private auction held at the gallery Friday
night, two limited edition prints and a publicity photograph of Burghoff
as Radar with his teddy bear were sold to raise money for three area
non-profit organizations: The Family Birthing Center at St. Luke’s
Hospital, Good Bears of the World, and the Foundation Fighting
Blindness.
Former M*A*S*H-mate Jamie Farr, in Toledo for his LPGA
tournament, also attended the event. With Farr acting as auctioneer,
$1,450 was raised for charity.
Originally published in the Bowling Green (Ohio) Sentinel-Tribune
Copyright © 1996, 2006 by Jeff Fearnside
