While Michael DeBonis’ first art show is a tribute to how far his painting skills have come in a short time, it’s also a salute to the perseverance of Valley Arts Guild Director Jacqueline Millner.

DeBonis, of Farrell, entered a work in the guild’s annual All Media Fine Arts Show about three years ago and won an honorable mention award.

The painting, "Place of Horror," shows three skeletal, terrified residents of a German World War II concentration camp. They are standing with a barbed wire fence in front of them and a searchlight shining from behind.

Based on only that work, Ms. Millner pursued DeBonis for a one-man show.

"The amount of emotion he showed in his painting, especially for someone who is self-taught, I thought the valley needed to see his work," said Ms. Millner, who did not see any more of DeBonis’ paintings until he brought his work to the guild to be hung for the show, which opens tonight.

DeBonis, a Hermitage native, put Ms. Millner off for a couple of years. "Every time I saw you I ran from you," he told Ms. Millner.

"She pushed me," he said. "She wanted me to have a show for so long. I kept saying no. I thought I wouldn’t have enough. She set a date and I painted my ass off."

DeBonis said he drew as a kid but gave it up for years. He started painting about 10 year ago, but has only been serious about it for five.

"Place of Horror" was his first painting and most of the 18 works in the show are based on the Holocaust: brutal images of bodies being carted off for burial and dumped in a common grave; the reaction of a sister to her dying brother; prisoners lined up to enter the gas chamber and an interior view as they scream and fall to the ground from breathing in the poison.

"I can’t say I enjoyed doing these," he explained. "I enjoy painting. But it got depressing after a while. I stopped several times. It was like something inside me was pushing me to continue and do it."

DeBonis said he has read about the Holocaust and watched television documentaries since he was a kid, but it wasn’t until later that he felt he started to understand what happened and the impact it had on families.

"I had two kids and it kind of hit me then, the reality of what they went through."

DeBonis is not Jewish and is not trying to make political or religious statements with the series, he said. He doesn’t want to insult German people. He considers the works humanitarian.

"It’s something to think about. It’s something that did happen. You can’t change it. As I was doing it, it was almost like I could change it, even though I know I can’t."

While painting, he struggled with the how to represent basic facts.

"I started it two years ago and I couldn’t finish it," he said of "The Assassin," which shows a German soldier looming over a man he has just executed.

DeBonis said he didn’t want to be "too graphic" -- the work shows the bullet entry hole and blood pooling on the ground -- and wasn’t sure he wanted to include a swastika on the soldier’s arm band.

"After a while this just got too much," he said of the series. "But I have a few I still want to do."

DeBonis, a truck driver for a construction company, said he would like to take the works to schools for brief showings.

"I never had intentions of anyone buying this," he said. "Who is going to hang this up in their living room?"

The show includes a few works unrelated to the Holocaust. While his depiction of Christ’s death on the cross and an ode to women who have lost children have disturbing elements, he exhibits a lighter side on other works.

"I wanted to show them I can do other things, more delightful things," he said.

"Sun/Flowers" depicts swirling sun rays as flowers. "Moon Lights Dance" gives human form to dancing moon beams. "Midnite in December" renders a man sitting on a stool in a snowy forest playing guitar while four naked women dance around him.

"Maybe it’s a fantasy," DeBonis said.

DeBonis’ style moves between straightforward and figurative and free-flowing waves of color, with hints of Picasso on both sides.

"I’m not a fruit painter," he said referring the grand still-lifes of the Renaissance, which impress him. "If I don’t have an emotion or a feeling for it, I can’t paint it."

DeBonis said he’s not nervous about tonight’s opening, but he’s interested to hear comments on his work. One man who saw the works this week told Ms. Millner that he thought the artist "had problems."

DeBonis smiled at the story.

"If you get good reviews or bad reviews, you’ve caught somebody’s eye," he said.

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