My Art

A New Painter Who Recently Discovered Himself Reveals a Trade Secret

HEYWOOD BROUN

WHEN they asked the young man whether he could play the violin he replied, "I don't know; I've never tried." And, by reason of this remark, he became a byword and a laughing stock. Still I do believe it's a fair thing to say about painting. I have seen children and other beginners cut loose and in their first attempts set lovely things on canvas. How can anybody tell whether he has a sense of colour until he looses pigments and begins to play with them?

In my own case I wish the oils could be more restrained. I'm not talking of the paints which get into the picture but the others which overflow upon the artist. That I am an intense artist there is no denying. Probably I take pride in that fact and still it is annoying and inconvenient to find king's yellow all across your chin and streaks of ultramarine upon the abdomen. You sec the trouble is that I get very close to my work and when things don't go right I plunge in head first. With more training it may be possible for me to learn the trick of going in one toe at a time.

For fun and excitement painting leaves the job of writing nowhere at all. Only very infrequently is a writer surprised by the effects which he creates. It would be most unusual for any author to sit down intent upon an essay only to find the words squirming out of his hands into a sonnet. But things like that do happen in painting. In my painting they can. The best of the lot was in the beginning an apple orchard which worked out during the process of composition into a storm at sea.

The effect which I tried to get of billowing blossoms was a failure but by changing the background a little these fluffy masses became upon the instant lovely waves.

MUCH is to be learned within the schools. Or so I suppose. But the middle-aged amateur will have more fun if he teaches himself. Perhaps he won't get far and yet all the joy of discovery can be his.

Small tricks which a competent instructor could give him in five minutes will come now only as the result of arduous experimentation. And this is better. Who wants to be told how to do things and thus lose all the peculiar joys which come to discovery? Columbus as you know went home in chains, but before that he was on his own. There is, I hold, no sense in reversing the usual process and starting off with shackles on in the very beginning. As a matter of fact, no artist, however amateur, can live long in this world without instruction. Among his friends there must be one, and much more likely many, who took free hand drawing or attended the institute of Mr. Parsons. It is no trouble to give advice. Even those who are in a hurry will stop long enough to tell you why you have no perspective and the philosophy of hot and cold colours. But also there will be compliments and these, I think you'll find, run very closely to a formula. Some person comes and stands before a picture. It might be my own cherished one called Gale in a Garden. Only too readily I perceive that this spectator is unworthy. The idea escapes him. The fellow is too dumb to tell the flowers from the flying clouds. In fact he doesn't even like the picture. To him it's terrible. A situation such as that calls for simple conduct. It is not necessary for him to do more than hang his head in silent shame and leave the room on hands and knees. But he must say something. All of them must say something. The line never varies. The visitor who does not like a picture remarks in 99.764 cases out of every hundred, "Nice colour". There ought to be a law against that.

HOWEVER, I have no right to go on giving uncalled for advice to amateurs for I've turned "pro" in painting. Although my art (which is what I call it) has been fermenting less than six months, I've already made almost forty dollars through the sale of eleven pictures. This very nearly covers the cost of paint and canvas and if it wasn't for the gin I'd be nearly even. If you really must pry into the financial affairs of an artist, and money is to all us painters boresome, I must clarify by explaining that $39.50 of the money I have earned at painting was obtained in an auction sale last summer. All afternoon it rained and so we could not swim or fish and, to amuse the guests, without any hope of gain, I put up a picture of my own at auction.

To my astonishment the people round about, by this time tired of drinking cocktails, manifested the greatest enthusiasm. The thing went like a hot cake. It was a marine with a distant volcano, a bit of beach, a few snow mountains, many waves and, if I remember, a brilliant sunset. The bidding was furious. By a dime at a time the price went up until I sold that little picture for $7.50.

The incident undoubtedly has affected the whole course of my life. The purchaser, herself an artist and a woman of great charm and distinction, paid in cash.

"How long has this been going on?" I asked myself quite softly and did some rapid figuring. At the rate of seven dollars and a half a picture I should be able to make seventy five dollars every day by devoting at least three hours to my pictures. Let'scheck up. Three hours is one hundred and eighty minutes. If a schedule of ten paintings a day is to be maintained we have eighteen minutes for each picture which should be ample. Seventy five dollars by six, or even seven because painting is not work and can be done on the Sabbath—but that I can't work out without paper and a pencil. Let's merely agree it is a lot of money.

THESE rosy prospects which were mine when first I became a professional artist have faded somewhat now. No other picture went for as generous a price as the first one, and since that day I've not succeeded in finding just the right mixture. Oh no not paint—I mean of gin and orange juice.

I might have sold the lot if we had not run out of oranges. Still not everything which occurred was for the best. Some of my pictures fell into the hands of philistines who were at the moment treading high and could, for just that afternoon, appreciate creative art. Next morning they had cooled again. One even had the audacity to complain.

"You've cheated me," was what he said. And I was almost mad enough to offer to return the $1.85 which he paid me. Unfortunately for him he went still further and now he won't take a cent back.

"When I bought that picture of yours," the rogue continued, "I liked it. I'll admit that much. It seemed to me the finest picture I had ever seen of a mountain torrent. The trout which you put in with his head just out of water was an admirable touch. But by chance I looked at the back of it yesterday and saw the description of the picture which you'd written. You call it Road, Two Oak Trees and a Meadozv Six and One Half Miles North of Stamford, Connecticut. Heaven forgive you—that which I took for a torrent is a macadam road. My heart is broken."

But they won't break my heart for me. Naturally I've suffered. Every artist has. By the year 2092 it may be that people will no longer think it funny to inquire "What's it supposed to be?" Still this has been going on a long time. When the first caveman took a fling at art and drew a picture of a mammoth on the rocky wall of his dwelling there was another caveman who asked him, leering, "What's it supposed to be?" Both men are dead now but the one who asked the question went first. Scientists who found the drawing on the wall have noticed dark splotches upon it. When the fool spoke, that original artist, who is the ancestor of us all, quietly killed him. It's a great pity this fine tradition has been allowed to lapse.

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Breakers are still ahead of me, for up to now I've painted neither from figures nor flowers in a bowl. It is the contact with life which terrifies me. I would not even know what to say to a model. And isn't it so that they generally faint and come from fine old Southern families? I don't know just why it is that I must get around to painting Eve before I'm done, but it seems to be an obligation. It's like the point where every actor must play Hamlet once or die a failure. In time I'll yield, but up till now I have stuck to my guns and been faithful to my slogan which still remains— No nudes is good nudes.