Shrouded by trees on Roxbury Drive, the house that is just a stone's throw from Rolling Road in Springfield has more than a few secrets.
As the residence of 81-year old Tucker Bobst, the house has been visited by a number of internationally known actors in the 10 years that Bobst and partner Richard Maloy have been living there.
"People in the neighborhood keep talking about the people who come here," said Bobst, a world-renowned artist specializing in a style dubbed "romantic surrealism."
A self-taught artist, who said his first real one-man show came during prep school in Groton, Mass., Bobst has won awards in France, England and Mexico and exhibited such galleries as The Athenaeum in Alexandria and The Fraser Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Bethesda, Md.
"The kind of work he does is exactly the kind of work we like to show. It's realism with an edge," said Catriona Fraser, owner and director of the Fraser Gallery. "There's no one else doing what he's doing now."
Bobst's work was recently made a part of the Clinton Presidential Library, which opened on Nov. 18 in Little Rock, Ark. His portrait, "President William Jefferson Clinton," which was painted in the mid-1990s, is included in the library's collection. It is Bobst's second portrait to be included in a presidential library. His 1980s-era painting, "Compact," which features former first lady Barbara Bush, is in the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library.
"They're not like portraits. They have a little bit of their history in there too," said Richard Maloy, Bobst's partner of nearly 60 years. The couple exchanged vows together in 1946 in New York City and have been devoted to each other ever since. They moved to Springfield in the late mid-1990s, after residing in Arlington, coincidentally right next door to Supreme Court chief justice William Rehnquist.
The two presidential library paintings are part of a larger "People in Paintings" series, an ongoing project that has seen Bobst paint such legendary actors and public figures as Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Sir John Gielgud.
"If I like people, I will paint them with no commission. A lot of them were friends, and some of them didn't buy them, and others did," said Bobst, who explained his reasoning for painting anyone — "Because they have interesting faces."
The portraits incorporate physical objects that have either personal or symbolic significance to the featured parties. Bush's portrait, for example, features a large compact, along with pearls and Lifesavers candy floating through. The origin of the painting, said Bobst, was a story about Barbara Bush’s being asked by children to open her purse and show them what was inside. The Clinton portrait features former President Clinton across a blue backdrop emblazoned with the words "New Beginnings - Renewed Hope."
The reasoning, Bobst explained, for his style of portraiture, is simple.
"Most portraits, they are stiff and formal, quite awful. You wouldn't want one done of you," he said.

LOCALLY, BOBST has been represented by the Fraser Gallery since shortly after it opened its first space in 1997 in the Georgetown district. He has had solo shows there in 1998 and 2002 and has been featured in group exhibitions regularly.
"He's incorporated popular cultural icons into his work, but with this extra layer of whimsy and intrigue in the work with the assemblages," said Fraser. "They're theatrical paintings."
In addition to being interesting personalities, most of the people featured in the series are personal friends of both Bobst and Maloy, who for many years lived outside New York City and Philadelphia, entertaining luminaries of the stage and screen like Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Pat Carroll and Angela Lansbury.
Many of their friends from over the years have died, but Bobst said he and Maloy continue to work daily. Maloy, a screenwriter, is also at work on a volume of memoirs for his partner. Bobst — who still can't show works in progress to anyone — no longer paints on commission, but still shows regularly. He already has shows lined up in 2005 for Paducah, Ky., and Fredericksburg, Va.