When Robert Paul Green took classes at the Akron Art Institute, he was against getting a full-blown art education.

He feared that an art school would try to turn him into a certain type of artist.

But he has continued his art training over the years, officially with classes at the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Loch Haven Art Center in Orlando, Fla., or informally, such as a recent visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art to study paintings by Francis Bacon and Georg Baselitz.

"Artists, like doctors and teachers -- it's an ongoing thing with training," said Green, whose painting show opens tonight at the Valley Arts Guild, Sharon.

That training has taken him in many directions. Unwilling to try to develop a signature style, he paints portraits, still-lifes, figure studies and religious and city scenes, and veers into the symbolic and the abstract.

Even his simplest paintings are about more than their subject or how they look.

"This isn't wall decoration," the East Palestine, Ohio, resident said. "I'm not a decorator; I'm a painter."

A portrait of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman from "Casablanca" is called "Loyalty," Green's take on the film as being about loyalty to self and community.

The rearing beast in "Red Sun Horse" shows "the spirit of an artist," he said. Artists, to be effective, cannot be bridled and saddled.

The lion in "King of the Lost" presides over a dying species and shrinking habitat. Death's shadow makes its way into an Egyptian castle for the 10th Biblical plague in "The Collar."

"Civilization" reduces its subject to a woman and a rose.

"When you stop and smell the roses, you're civilized," he said.

"Sarah" is a large work -- the largest he has done -- at 83 inches tall and 48 inches wide. Green said he agreed with Chuck Close's explanation for painting large portraits: people are important.

But the portrait of Green's 17-year-old daughter goes beyond an affectionate rendering of a loved one. It shows three hands reaching in from the sides and a book on a table in the foreground.

"At her age, everyone's trying to give her directions and she's trying to figure out what to do with her life," Green explained.

Abraham Lincoln is wrapped with meaning for American history buffs, and Green wanted to try to add his voice to the discussion in his portrait of the Civil War president.

"I think he's someone everyone can relate to, and he has certain qualities that are attractive to an artist," Green said, noting the character in Lincoln's face.

Claiming his paintings are "deeper than I am," Green, 56, often posts poems with his works to help explain them.

Although Green calls himself a "professional painter" -- he makes his living as a maintenance man -- he has sold only one piece and the guild show is just his second after years of work.

Most of the 24 pieces in the show were painted within the last three years.

"Through the years, I gave them away, threw them away, burned them or cut them up into smaller pieces and saved what I liked," he said of his work.

A portrait of his son is all that is left of a much larger painting.

But Green is proud of the works in the show, saying they are "kind of like children to me."

While Green hopes people like his work, he wants his subject matter and technique to be appreciated, even if the overall painting isn't.

"I try to make works that people will respect," he said.