Everything Hurts

By WR Jones

    I had leave work in the middle of the morning yesterday to head home and put ice on my back.  Yet another gym injury.  I could see it coming when that dufuss instructor started the double exercise of squats and lifting weights overhead, but I did it anyway. 

    My knee hurts most of the time, I’ve several back injuries, my shoulder hurts, my right forearm hurts with each keystroke.  Now I’ve switched to using the mouse with my left hand.  I tried mixing paint left handed.  It was 9:00 PM before I had the color mixed to catch that sunrise.

    My brain is deteriorating every bit as fast as the rest of me.  I don’t like to be a pessimist but I can see myself on my deathbed smoking one last cigar and reading one last headline:

    FDA Approves New Drug To Extend Life Another 150 Years – To Cost $17 Per Month.

RATSHIT!

My Fantasy

by Lisa

       Sometimes, when painting is not going well, and more than one student is blaming me for their inability to paint like Sargent, and I realize I will never be a marketing genious and make money at this by adding bible verses to my paintings, and Bill annoys the shit out of me, I dream of the day that I never have to paint again.

       Here, if you would, go to http://www.last.fm/user/Artist855, and search for Christopher Gunning – Lisieux to play as the perfect accompanyment for the following fantasy of mine. I did my best to add it to this post automatically, but it got way too complicated for my time and attention span:

       I am wandering around a gallery of every painting and drawing I have ever done. No wait, that won’t work. I am wandering around a gallery of every GOOD painting and drawing I have ever done. (Fantasies cannot be nightmares.) Of course, picture me in a flowing Vera Wang gown please, and ballet slippers as I should appear to float effortlessly like a stylish ballerina. I go from painting to painting and as I pause at each piece, the memory of the time and circumstance in which it was painted dissolves in and out. Then, with a graceful tharpian wave of my body, the piece disappears entirely from the wall  Oh yea. I move onto the next. Slowly my life unfolds through my work, and as I get to the very last one, I can’t resist picking up a paint brush and fixing one last freaking thing on it. The accompanying dissolve shows me sitting here at my computer with bed hair, and coffee breath in my jammies watching the clock going, “damn I need to finish this and get out of here”.

       Finally, I move to the door of the gallery turning one last time to look at the empty walls. The room is now filled with people. On one side is people I have known in the past who have said things to me like “You call yourself an artist and you don’t know what figure/ground ambiguity is?” as well as every juror who rejected a piece of mine from a show. With one last salutatory gesture with my middle finger they disappear — into a ball of fire. On the other side of the room are painters like my beloved Odd Nerdrum, David Leffel, and Gregg Kreutz. With my smile tinged with melancholy, but hopes for a new future I blow them a kiss. They dissappear into a cascade of sparkling fairy dust as I pirhouette and with one grande jete I bound from the door never to be seen by the art world again.

And at midnight I am back in my ragged jeans and my paint stained shirt cursing the day I switched from pre-med to artist.

 

Preorder

By W. R. Jones

    I’m going painting for the next two weeks.  As a clairvoyant, I think this could be a painting of my trip.  It is a view from a park and ride in Camarillo looking back toward Thousand Oaks.  As soon as the painting was finished I wished I had rotated right about 40 degrees for a better scene including a mountain. 

    I couldn’t get this field worker to move to the right so I could paint the motif I preferred.  The only Spanish I know being, (where is the bathroom – sometimes my accent throws them off even with this question - my backup Spanglish version “is it ok if I pee here?”) wasn’t applicable in this case.  Oh, and I suggest you be careful where you use my Spanglish phrase; it is not good in most restaurants.  After a couple of beatings I was able to absorb this lesson.

     I was so pissed off by my inability to communicate with this woman, I screamed “La Migra”, and damned if she didn’t freeze.  This is a valuable piece of information for future field studies.  She stayed like this ’til I yelled out my window as I drove off, “ALL CLEAR”.   I think she was trying to look like a turnip.

    The logical reason to think this might represent my upcoming “party time” trip is that I have been doing my checkbook balancing for the last few weeks.  I’ve managed to go from minus $14,000 down to minus $500.  I didn’t actually take in any more money I just decided to leave out some of those bigger checks I’ve written.  After repeated attempts to get a positive outcome I could clearly see they were being obstructive.

    But then I’m thinking that minus $500 doesn’t look all that promising for an upscale vacation anyway.  This spot is about as far as I will get with the gas I can afford, and it looks like I may be sleeping here as well.  I could end up in the field picking for a little something to eat.  I’m going to practice shouting “La Migra” and see how long I can hold my position.

    I’m hoping my neighbor will leave his car out in the driveway before I leave.  That should get me enough gas to get past this location.  I should be safe as he is so busy watching his flowers in the back yard.

    By the way I sold this painting to Hillary Clinton for $3000.   Ok, that is a lie.  I thought if I sold something to a famous person my work would be more desirable. 

    I’m off to paint the wild west, native Americans, flowers, cactus, and maybe a few bars.  This will be followed by a lecture tour coming to your area.  Advance tickets can be purchased by emailing me $5 cash.

    Once this lecture series about my fabulous landscapes begins I expect the value of these pieces to skyrocket.  For this reason I want to give you, my faithful readers, the opportunity to preorder these works of great beauty.  To get in on this onetime (unless it actually works) chance at owning a genuine BJ, email another $5 cash.  For those of you who can’t balance a checkbook with my skill, that is $15 total for the lecture and the little square of canvas.