Their backgrounds are as different as their ages but the love for their art consumes them.

“When I first cut into stone something happened to me,” says 81-year-old Tony Cano. “I know it’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Cano grew up in San Francisco, was raised primarily by his grandmother. Down the street from his grandmothher’s house lived a five foot tall, Italian-born, sculpting giant Beniamino “Bene” Benvenuto Bufano who handed Tony his first piece of clay.

“I watched Bene, I learned from him but then I rebelled,” says Cano.

Tony turned his back on his art in his late teens. Over the years he thought of sculpting but he had his family, his job, a busy life. He was a truck driver for the state printing office for 36 years. When he got close to retirement Tony started thinking about sculpting again. Eventually he started sculpting with wood. That’s when it all started happening.

“It was like I was channeling,” Cano explains. “Emotionally something happens to me. It’s like an innate predisposition in me to create. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Cano spends hours, sometimes days, looking at a stone until he feels something. When he does, he sketches a few lines on the stone until he is carried away.

“I work out my thoughts, my feelings on each piece,” says Cano. “How many of us have feelings inside, a capacity or propensity to create, to paint, to sculpt, to write, but we never do.”

“All those years at the state I was a truck driver. Something was missing. When I sculpt I feel good about me. It brings up feelings – sadness, resentment, happiness.”

Tom Walsh had the same experience as Tony. Even though Walsh, at 56, is 25 years younger than Tony, their stories are parallel in that Tom drew when he was a kid but “I put it all away when I got married.”

“I had kids, a family, responsibilities, but then the kids grew up and I got time to look at my life again,” Tom says.

In 2003, after 30 years of working in the automotive industry and then selling office furniture, Tom picked up drawing again. Pen and ink. He did that for a few years “but it didn’t feel right.” Somehow Tom found Susan Sarbach, the owner of Chroma Gallery and the founder of the School of Light and Color. He took an art class from Susan and found “what I needed to do.”

Tom still sells office furniture but he thinks about painting “twenty-four – seven,” he says. “I think about where I’m going to paint all week long.” Tom loves to paint at Stone Lakes Natural Wild Life Refuge and Cosumnes Wild Life Preserve.

Tom paints still lifes and landscapes. Plein air (is French for “the open air” or “the daylight of outdoors”) is “what I love,” he says calmly and confidently. “It’s what I was meant to do. It’s about light – seeing and experiencing the world in all kinds of light.”

First Friday Artists’ Reception and Show

Debut of sculpture by Tony Cano and oils by Tom Walsh. Eighty-one-year-old Cano has been sculpting for 30 years, since “I first cut into wood and something happened to me.” Also featured are still lifes and landscapes in plein air (painted on location) by Walsh who fell into painting after his children were grown. “I now know painting is what I need to do.” 6 – 9 p.m. Friday, Aug. 7. Sutter Lawn Tennis Club, 3951 N. Street, Sacramento. (916) 451-3336.