Drawn to landscapes, he’s off to tackle wilderness

“We didn’t have the things that kids grow up with now, so everybody improvised,’’ he recalled recently from his home in Carlisle. “So we made things on our own: toys and games, but also sketches and drawings.’’

For the budding artist, scarcity became opportunity.

“I started competing with one of my classmates in first grade. We created drawings with pen and ink and kept trying to outdo one another. Art is not a bad pastime when you have little else for entertainment.’’

Nearly seven decades later, Platais is retired from a career in advertising but working as hard as ever as an artist. Besides teaching art classes in Lexington and Concord, he paints the New England landscapes that surround him at home and at his family’s vacation cottage on the coast of Maine.

Now, a recent award has given Platais the chance to try something different. As this year’s recipient of the Artist in Wilderness program grant, he will travel to Colorado and try his hand at painting the peaks, trees, and wildflowers of the Rockies. The grant is given by the Wilderness Workshop, a conservation foundation protecting the White River National Forest and other federal public land in the region.

“Our jury chose Maris for his sensitivity to the natural environment and superb technique,’’ said Mary Dominick, who chairs the Wilderness Workshop program. “The six pieces he submitted for his application were all scenes from Maine and northern Massachusetts, and the jury felt his depiction of a Western landscape would be unique and interesting, and project the value of preserving wild places in perpetuity.’’

Long before he painted New England landscapes, Platais discovered that his artistic skills were an asset in adjusting to a new home. Immigrating to Boston with his parents and brother in 1949, the 13-year-old knew very little English when he enrolled in junior high school, he said, “and if nothing else, I learned I could get a much better grade on an English composition if I turned it in with a beautifully designed cover.’’

By the time he finished high school, his English was fluent. Platais enrolled in a joint degree program at Tufts University and the Boston Museum School but ran out of tuition money halfway through, so he interrupted his studies for a four-year stint with the Marine Corps. He then returned to college, where he met his wife, Elizabeth, a Carlisle native.

Majoring in commercial art paved the way to a career in advertising, and as he and his wife raised their two young daughters, Cynthia and Rachel, he worked in the advertising department at the Dennison Manufacturing Co. in Framingham.

But by the mid-1980s, computerized art production replaced much of the work his department did at Dennison, and Platais yearned to make a full-time commitment to the painting he had loved ever since his school days. A layoff provided the excuse he needed to become a full-time artist.

Galleries throughout New England snapped up his work, and institutions including the fine arts museums in Boston and Worcester, the Smithsonian Institution, the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, and the Cincinnati Museum Center exhibited his paintings as well. For several years, he and three other artists ran a cooperative gallery in Rockport.

Platais discovered acrylics back when most artists still considered the medium far inferior to oil painting, he said. Acrylic paint had a particular advantage to a father of two young children with a home studio; compared with oil paints, it dries faster, meaning less chance of a mess, and did not send fumes throughout the house. While his peers condemned acrylics for their somewhat lifeless shades, he learned to mix in small amounts of house paint in vivid primary colors to create the intense hues he wanted.

He was always drawn to landscapes. “I was never too interested in painting still life or portraits,’’ he said. “If you can capture the coast of Maine, and the fields, stone walls, and trees of Carlisle and Concord, you’ve captured the essence of New England.’’

His talent for landscape painting resulted in 11 “Top 100’’ Arts for the Parks awards, a competition sponsored by the National Park Academy of the Arts in which artists paint scenes from US national parks.

Every year, he creates an original painting for WGBH’s fund-raising auction, seeing it as a way to raise money for a good cause. His late mother-in-law, who died earlier this year, was a master jigsaw-puzzle maker, and the two often collaborated: He would paint a scene on five-layer mahogany plywood and then she would cut it into puzzle pieces.

His mission as an artist isn’t much different than it was when he began drawing as a child.

“Simply put, I’m not trying to be political or say what’s wrong with the world. As I see it, in a subtle way I’m saying what’s right with it,’’ he said. “When I paint or draw a landscape, I’m seeing a much more complex thing than just trees, streams, clouds, boats. I’m seeing a harmony of colors, of place, of feeling, of atmosphere, and that’s something I like to share with people.

“It’s not to prove anything or make any glorious statement; just to express that we are all here together, all on this same little planet, and there’s so much to enjoy about it.’’