Albert Troglin is a rock artist on a roll.

He discovered his passion as a painter soon after retiring from his engineering job. That was several years ago. But he didn’t start painting right away, and he did not become an artist overnight. The idea of being one was not even a twinkle in his eye at that time. Like many retirees though, Troglin has a penchant for traveling. He also happens to be a self-described “rock hound,” so everywhere he and wife Sharon went during their travels, he collected rocks that struck his fancy.

He found serpentine, California’s state rock, in the Mother Lode.

“There’s lots of it along the Coast Range. If you drive down Highway 49 through the Mother Lode, it’s lined with serpentine.  You can find it everywhere (in California).That’s why it’s the state rock,” Troglin said.

In the Mojave desert, he found onyx and agate. A trip to Idaho yielded a rare agate. From the Anderson Lake in San Jose, he brought home a magnisite.

Soon, his rock collection included banded onyx and white Onyx from the Mojave desert and agate from the desert’s Castle Butte. He found jade rock from the Klamath River, an agate seginite, and a Graveyard Point agate from Idaho, so called because the rock is found in the old mining company of the same name on the Snake River in that northern state.

The Graveyard Point agate from Idaho is something special. It is also “very expensive because you can’t collect it anymore” because it’s prohibited to do so, Troglin explained.

“On public land, you can pick up any rock you want,” as long as they are outside Bureau of Land Management-designated areas, he said. The exceptions where you can’t touch any of the rocks are national parks such as Yosemite and Death Valley.

But a funny thing happened while he was collecting rocks. He started imagining the intricate and exquisite patterns on the rocks as possible backdrops for pictures. Pretty soon, he was painting away.

“And that’s how I started painting,” Troglin said with a smile.

He attended “art classes and workshops from different artists,” he said, “but everybody has to do something different.” For him, that niche was creating oil paintings with rocks as his canvas.

“What I attempt to do is, I look at a rock and see the natural patterns on the rock. Then I think of a subject” that would be fitting for the rock’s unique texture, he explained.

“So the background for my painting is what Mother Nature put on the rock,” Troglin said.

His canvas is a thin slice of rock that he himself cut or had someone do it for him. These paintings are framed like regular art works on canvas. Some of his paintings, though, are done on hefty rocks – one is about three feet tall and about two feet wide at the base. Others are small enough to be placed on table tops. The paintings on these three-dimensional projects are done on a side of the rock that was cut with the surface serving as his canvas.

More than a dozen of Troglin’s paintings are currently on display in the Council Chambers at the Manteca Civic Center, except the three-dimensional ones. The art exhibit is open for public viewing during regular business hours at City Hall located at 1001 West Center Street.

The paintings are not for sale, but Troglin is open for commissioned works. He can be reached at (209) 838-7725.