Gone Fishin

By W R Jones

    I was parked along the mountain road with a good start (not good in quality, good in the sense; no ant bites, no wind, not cold, didn’t have paint all over myself, didn’t have to go to the bathroom, wasn’t hungry, etc) when a carload of rough looking Hispanic teenage boys pulled up blocking my van from any movement.

    I felt very uneasy and was thinking about moving toward the van where I had a pistol.  What kept me rooted near the painting was the memory of the last time my paranoia got hold of me and I unloaded on that busload of preschoolers.   My attorney said I was extremely fortunate, that is exactly how he put it, “extremely fortunate”, those lawyers talk real smooth, that I was using a cap pistol at the time.  I’m off those wild mushrooms now.  Lesson learned there, don’t eat something just because you kicked it loose with your boot and don’t want to see it go to waste.  I was only locked up long enough to get me a new jail Tat.  Not a real one, that would hurt.  I got one of those band-aids with animals (for my ant bites).  I told the fellas it was a tattoo.

    I had a friend who always carried a concealed handgun wherever he went.  When I asked him if he wasn’t concerned about being picked up with an illegal weapon he replied, “Better to be caught with it than without it.”  This lose – lose type of scenario is where the term horns of a dilemma  springs from.

    Anyway, my worries were unfounded.  One of the teenagers came over asking if it would bother my painting if they fished in the area.  At that, I took a breath for the first time in a few minutes and let out a very squeaky, “no no no no no no bother at all”.

    Later another of the boys came by with some information, “you know, there are a lot of good painters in this area.”  Yes, I say, I know.  He looked at my painting and muttered, “not all of em, I guess”.  “Say, what’s that you are painting?”, he asks.  “Is that suppose to be an old Buick?  Pretty good, pretty good.”   I hope that asshole never catches a fish.

LISA – is this short enough for you?  Made it all the way down to here?  Didn’t fall asleep?

(Lisa says I’m too long winded and that, coupled with being boring, is killing the blog.  She is keeping me on out of charity.)

 

Painting Ho

by Lisa

          Marc Chagall 

       I have a confession to make. I once pimped my artistic services. I am, therefore, a painting ho.

       Right before we moved from Tennessee in 2001, I was contacted by the fiancée of one of the Tennessee Titan’s coaches. They were planning their wedding, and they had come up with a right spectacular idea. To make their wedding ceremony complete (more complete than any ceremony I have ever heard of) they decided it would be truly wonderful if a painter could paint their portrait capturing their initial moment of wedded bliss as soon as they were pronounced husband and wife.

       As stunned as I was by the ingenuity of this plan, I had to inform the love blind couple that it would be one LONNNNNG ceremony if I was to paint a double portrait of them on stage in front of the throngs of well wishers which would include the entire Tennessee Titans team as well as the head hunk coach Jeff Fisher. Not to be derailed by this logistic, they came up with a very clever solution. If I could paint the portrait ahead of time, and then set up AS IF I were going to paint on the spot, I could then reveal the finished portrait to the audience, and they would think it was magic, or I was a freaking genius.

       The day of the wedding arrived. Working from a photo taken by a wedding photographer (bless his heart) I had completed a head and shoulders portrait of the happy couple posing together in their wedding clothes (apparently their desire for the portrait superseded the tradition of hiding the blushing bride until wedding day). I had agreed to dress in a long blue gown I had that would go well with the colors of the wedding, and over the gown I was to wear, are you ready? A PAINTERS SMOCK…over the GOWN.

       The wedding took place at a beautiful antebellum mansion in the country. The ceremony was on the steps leading up to the great columns at the front entrance before an audience of very big men and Jeff Fisher. After the minister pronounced them husband and wife, the band began playing something sentimental. This was my cue to hustle on “stage” with my french easel, my blue gown and my smock, and feign painting. The idea was I had the length of the song to deceive the audience as the couple struck the same pose they were holding in the already completed portrait. It took quite a bit of swashbuckling strokes with the paintbrush to affect the illusion. (David Copperfield, I have a patent on this.)

       In the end, I got quite a round of applause for my virtuosity, and the happy couple rode off into the sunset with their wonderful dry portrait tucked safely under their arms. As difficult as the commission was I felt good about making their day complete. It probably hangs over their fireplace and I’ll bet they look at it every day if they’re not divorced.

       Unfortunately, I never took a picture of the painting to post here, perhaps a bit of selective oversight going on, and instead I have posted a wedding portrait by Marc Chagall above.

       I can’t help but to mourn the fact that had I stayed in Nashville, my reputation as a wedding painter may have grown and I could have captured a niche that has been untapped until today as of this post when I am sure that a number of you viewers are going to run with the idea.

Pssst–please don’t tell anyone I did this…

Plein Air ~ My Way

By W.R. Jones

   

    Another night of below freezing temperature, another forecast of high winds and partly cloudy; do I really want to paint in this?  On the way to the grocery store to get something for breakfast I was listening to Frank Sinatra on Sirius.  I don’t know why I was listening to him, I don’t like his singing at all.   I don’t try to live rationally anymore.   He was singing My Way.  I felt he had a good world view going there.

    So, I asked myself, what and who defines “Plein Air”.  I googled it and the most common definition is painting in open air.  Well, what is open air?  How open does it have to be?  Does it need to extend horizon to horizon?  I think not.  Suppose a fellow is painting in a very narrow, steep walled canyon, would not that still be considered plein air?  OK, how about a narrow, steep walled box canyon?  Still plein air I believe, even though we have closed off open air from three sides.

   Before we get to that 4th and final side how about the sky?  We’ve all seen photos of the famous painters under an umbrella.   Is there any formal dimensional or material restrictions on the umbrella?  No, then why don’t we extend the size of the umbrella to roughly, oh say, the width of a hotel room.  No restrictions on material, we can replace those flimsy wire supports with 2×4′s and the cloth with roof tiles. 

   Now we have that remaining open side to deal with.  If we start pulling a curtain down from heaven, how far down does it have to come before we are no longer painting plein air?  Again, no formal definitions seem to be available.  I say we can pull it down until we have an opening left of, let’s say, the size of a hotel window. 

    Now I’m comfortably set up in my hotel room with the window open (to keep it a legit plein air piece).  What do we paint doing plein air?  Flora, fauna, bugs, and natural elements.  The potato and beans are certainly flora.  There is no fauna in this work.  I did learn something here.  I looked up the meaning of fauna to see if I was painting any; I always thought it was Mexican for a female Bambi; it is any animal.

    The paper on the bean can comes from trees and the can itself comes from natural elements.  We are good to go.  In keeping with the paint the wild west theme of this trip, I worked in an area with a goodly number of native Americans.  They were as plentiful as the buffalo on the prairie.  I saw quite a few at the reservation casino the night before.  I’m a pretty hard core gambler.  I was playing nickel slots but putting two and sometimes three in per pull.  I lost my sock full of nickels.  Now I have nothing to use to pound sand down a rat hole like mom is always telling me to do.  There was also another goup of native Americans running the checkout stands and the grocery.  They were pleasant.  I was afraid they would be angry about my trying to take over their land.  I think word may have circulated not to worry, grandpa has no more nickels.

    Like all plein air work you must expect the unexpected (does that make sense?)   My wife had taken my old geezer’s easy grip can opener from my camper.  I had to open the beans with a rock and that set of car keys someone left in the lobby.  I’m sure his car will start again after he wipes off the bean crud and pounds the key straight.

    Here is the only bright spot in and otherwise bitter recent birthday.  I got nothing even though I campaigned vigrously for months.  But Susan, a warm caring woman,  took pity on my panicked toss of a favorite brush into a stream and created a new brush for me.

 

   I used this brush to paint the potato, the table cloth, and my toenails.  It is a beauty.