A friend commissioned a portrait of himself to give his parents for Christmas. His mother asked me to paint his sister, so she would have a portrait of them both.

The girl's boyfriend was not pleased to have his sweetie over at some guy's house for several hours each week, so he came by to see what was really going on.

When I answered the door, he asked, "How long does it take to paint a @#%* portrait? I could have done the Sistine Chapel in this length of time." I told him the Sistine Chapel was done by a little scrawny guy who was eighty years old when he did it, and it took years. He watched the girl look at me, and me look at her and paint on her portrait, decided it was about as interesting as watching grass grow, and left for the gym.

 

A guy asked me "Would you paint a portrait of my wife naked?"
"Sure, but it might embarrass her, and I usually wear clothes when I paint."

 

Several people were standing around at a wedding discussing various things. One had visited an art supply with me the previous day, and told the others how expensive artist's brushes were. He said he had seen little paint brushes not a quarter inch wide, that cost $100. A guest said he didn't know brushes were so expensive. He thought only fishing reels cost $100. I thought we were even, because I didn't know fishing reels cost that much.

 

A lady called at an inopportune time and asked, "Will you paint my cat?"
"Certainly," I replied, "Do you want it dipped or sprayed?"

 

During a discussion of marble, I mentioned that I had read the marble in Columbia CA was as good as the Italian. One person asked, "If it was so good, why didn't Michelangelo use it?" I wonder if they ever heard of Columbus, 1492, and all of that.

 

I bought a Whistler etching of his niece. A friend and I were discussing it as a couple guys walked by. One asked, "What did you buy?" I told him it was a Whistler etching. "What's an etching?" I described how an etching is made. "What do you do with it?" I told them you hung it on the wall and looked at it. "Like a picture, huh?" Just like a picture.

One of them asked "How much did you pay for it?" I told them it cost more than $700. "I could have bought a set of snow tires for my Jeep with that kind of money. I couldn't afford to pay that much for a picture. I told him he could afford it because he drove to work in a car that cost several thousand dollars. Whether it was worth it or not to him was a value judgment. I would agree with him if he said an etching was not worth that to him, but I would not agree that he couldn't afford it.

This type of person would be more impressed if I framed the receipt instead of the picture.

 

The Factory Mentality
"These pictures look so good, I don't believe they were made by hand!"
What kind of machine paints pictures?

"Who did that self portrait of you?" The cat.

"You do such dynamite art work, and when I first saw it, I couldn't believe you did it."
Actually the cat does it while I am out.

I wish the cat would do something, but he doesn't. Some friends asked me to go somewhere, and I told them I couldn't go because of the cat. They asked, "What does the cat have to do with it?" I replied, "The cat has watched me paint a lot of pictures, and should know how to do it by now, but when I go home, I find my pictures just the way I left them. If I don't paint them they won't get done, so I have to go home and paint."

"I want to let you know we have the mule picture out in the living room, and people always comment on it. Nick said when he was little he thought mules were huge compared to people. (He didn't understand perspective yet :)) We have the portrait you did of me in the bedroom. Neita loves it."

Abe Nussbaum said Rembrandt did about 400 pictures, and 700 of them are in America.

 

My paintings are rarer than Rembrandt's. Every museum in the country has several of his, but how many of them have one of mine?

 

A cousin's young son said to me, "My momma says you can draw real good. I like to draw cartoons. What do you draw?" I replied, "I draw flies." He looked at me peculiarly, said "Oh" and walked off looking perplexed. I saw him about six months later, and he said "I figured out what you meant when you said you draw flies. You mean you stink, huh? That was a joke "

 

A friend visited and saw the unfinished painting of Nan with the mandolin. He happened to be downtown one day and saw her. He later told me he went over to her and said "I know you, you're the girl Kerry's painting." She said that was the first time she had been recognized by a total stranger.

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