The stereotypical identities of an artist and a well drilling contractor don’t necessarily fit together, but that’s not a problem. Steve Alberg sees himself as more of an illustrator anyway.
"Let’s face it, I am probably the exact opposite of the perception of most people," Alberg said earlier this summer. "I’ve been in the construction business for almost 40 years now. These hands aren’t made for painting."
Alberg, 57, is known around the area as the part owner, along with his brother Greg, of Alberg Water Services in Annandale. In recent years, however, Alberg has begun to re-explore his sidelined artistic abilities, and a handful of paintings now testify to his skill.
"I’m in the latter years of my life. I’m almost 60. And I’ve had so many people say throughout my life say, ‘You’re in the wrong business. Why didn’t you get into art?’ Well, it’s that contractor thing in me. How do you job cost that? I should really punch a clock when I do a painting," said Alberg. "But that’s the wrong mindset. I’m completely the wrong kind of animal to be doing artwork. The illustrating part of it did serve me throughout my life, though. I was known as the guy who, if you don’t understand something, Alberg will draw you a picture."
Early signs, contracting
Growing up in Annandale, Alberg enjoyed drawing machinery: airplanes, snowmobiles and motorcycles.
"I could draw that stuff. I was really into the detail and engineering of it. Every nut and bolt," said Alberg.
When his older cousin Diane introduced him to painting around age 8, Alberg produced a surprisingly good portrait of a bobwhite quail. He didn’t pick up a paintbrush again until his junior year of college, however.
After graduating from Annandale in 1977, Alberg began college at Morris.
There, at 250 pounds, he was the largest running back in the NCAA.
"I was a battering ram, basically," he said.
After multiple injuries, however, Alberg quit football and transferred to the Twin Cities campus, where he hoped to use his illustrating skills to go into commercial art and advertising. On that large campus, however, Alberg had a difficult time securing the classes he needed to pursue his degree in a timely manner, and the faculty members in the art department were not encouraging.
"They knew I was a jock," said Alberg. "They were looking at me laughing and going, ‘You’re in art class? Yeah, right.’"
When it came to the class projects, Alberg would often focus his art on wildlife – a suitable subject for his detail-oriented preference, but not at all a fit with his instructors’ penchant for more abstract material.
"The next thing I knew they were calling me Audubon (after the famous wildlife artist John James Audubon) and yuk-yukking," said Alberg. "I couldn’t take it. I just wasn’t the right person to be there."
With an extended wait needed to pursue his degree and his college costs rising, Alberg decided to take a year off and work with his father Charles in the well industry. His brother Greg joined a short time later, and an uncle also worked at the water development company Layne in Minneapolis. Charles eventually rose to become the president of the company, but after his retirement Greg and Steve started their own business and moved back to the Annandale area around 2000.
Becoming a painter
Alberg’s contracting career kept him busy over the years, working on wells and pumps from Montana to Wisconsin, but in the meantime he watched his daughter Jill develop her own artistic talent, graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Stout (where Alberg had once intended to resume his college career) with a degree in art, and become a highly regarded art teacher in Buffalo.
"I was watching this kid blossom. I saw this artwork she was doing and there was my competitive nature again. I thought, ‘I need to try some artwork again,’" said Alberg. "Rather than drawing, I would try painting. I had never really done a lot of painting, and I’ve only been painting four or five years now. She’s coaching me a little bit on technique."
Alberg typically paints during the late winter, after the busy summer work season and time off for ice fishing. Over the past few years he has produced impressive paintings that include a hunting scene of his son and his dog, a pair of crappies swimming through sunlit water, a bard owl swooping past a river scene, and a pheasant feeding against a winter backdrop.
He also has a collection of numerous drawings and charcoal works, and guessed that each painting took 60 to 80 hours to complete.
"Some of the masters who compete in duck stamps have hundreds of works in their homes and galleries. Would I like to compete with them? Well, if I had another lifetime I could," said Alberg. "I know I can paint. I didn’t know 25 years ago if I could paint."
Each painting begins with a pencil-drawn background based on a photograph, a memory or some imagination, and Alberg said the fish painting was his biggest challenge so far. Details like the scales, and getting the proper coloring of semi transparent fins with a water background, were tricky.
"I spend many hours just doing the outlines and some of the detail work, the fins, the eyes, the mouth, and some of the main elements of it – size, balance, composition, that all starts with a line drawing," he said. "There is a lot of art work out there that starts with nothing other than the slap of a paint brush. But I’m illustrating. I’m trying to get everything perfect.
"To some artists, it’s junk, because all I’m doing is illustrating. That’s why I never made it through academia. But what’s more true art? It’s in the eye of the beholder."
On display
Alberg has not yet tried to commercialize his work, though the contractor side of him sees potential there when he is ready to retire from well work.
In the meantime, a few reproductions of his works have been on display around town at Petty Brothers and at Anja’s Arts on Main Street.
He still prefers drawing to painting because it is faster, but is having fun with the new medium.
"I’m not challenging anyone but myself, but I’m a detail guy," he said. "I’m competitive to a point where everything I do, I want to do it better."
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