Talent... is Applied Interest

[mrrsm]

One weekend back in the 1980s... My wife and I were lounging and watching television and there was an interesting program on Public TV showing an Elderly Austrian Artist named Bill Alexander performing the miracle of doing a complete Oil Painting from start to finish in less than Thirty Minutes. Between his funny “Fire In...derrr” comments and mad gyrations with a 3” wide brush more suited to painting Kitchen Cabinets than doing Fine Art... emerged a gorgeous and colourful Mountain Scene.

I was ruminating over his actions and techniques and at one point during the show, I ad-libbed the comment, “Hummmm... I’ll bet I could do that...”. My wife sat straight up and with a shocked look upon her pretty face...she said...” YOU always think you can do ANYTHING!”... The show went on to finish a “Happy Little Scene...” as Bill would say over and over...and I gave the matter no more thought... Other to say back to her with the grumpy reply...” Look... Talent is nothing more than Applied Interest..”

Months later ...around Christmas time... we were exchanging gifts and at one point she was inordinately excited about handing me a fairly large, rectangular shaped boxy present. As I peeled off the Christmas wrapping... I could read and see that she had gotten me ...an Oil Painting Art Kit called:

“The Magic of Oil Painting”

Her first comment to me was...” All Right...Big Boy... Now go out into the back yard... and make me an Oil painting!" Well... what could I say...? I roused my courage and determination and went directly into that mission and within a few hours... I had managed to get more Oil Paint on my face and clothes than on the small canvas... and what was there looked more like a “Dog’s Breakfast” ...muddy and unrecognisable as being anything worthy of hanging on the wall... unless of course she wanted to make her point about ridiculing my ineffable self-confidence and unyielding belief that I can literally do ANYTHING that I put my mind to doing.

But after that ...something DID happen that might be considered worth mentioning here...and that is that I kept at it... and gradually... after many failures of Putting the Paint on the Canvas... I managed to create paintings that people I worked around were willing to pay good money for... and in some cases... they just could not help themselves... They simply had to have what they saw on the those canvasses hanging on the walls inside their homes. And so... to this very day... I still believe in the idea that “Talent IS Applied Interest...” and you can do just about anything you want to try.... if you have the desire to work through your failures and set backs to achieve your goals. The attached images are a sample of some of the paintings I have done over the years:

**** There are a few more paintings added in a later post down below....****

 

[HARDTRAILZ]

I am a decent finger painter and a badass with a can of spray paint

 

[smt 59]

I could not paint a picture like that but I paint a mean wall.

 

[mrrsm]

If you mean like a mural painting... that would be cool for us to see, too!

 

[smt 59]

If you mean like a mural painting... that would be cool for us to see, too!

Lol, no like the hallway, bedroom, living room etc.

 

[mrrsm]

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[mrrsm]

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[mrrsm]

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[mrrsm]

It is often at the very beginning and the very end of the day that the light from the Sun filters through the Earth's atmosphere just so... and places that you might not give a second glance at in Bright Sunshine ...often become Quiet, Serene and Beautiful. My wife often tired of what she described about my Art Work as being, "Too Big... Too Bright... Too Blue... and WAY Too Much 'Mountain Drama'...!" and begged me to create some smaller, less ostentatious painting scenes that she could put around her desk at work as "My Husband's Miniatures"... Here are some views that I tried out that may have come close to the mark of capturing "The Twilight of The World" in both Summer...and Winter:

 

[mrrsm]

Now that she had been retired for a month or so... "The Lil' Woman" has decided to eliminate a lifetime collection of "Junk Boxes" we have all over the place and while emptying out one of mine... she found a small collection of images of an usual Oil Painting that I had long ago forgotten.

As it happened... way back in the late 1980's, a young detective... an attractive, buxom and amiable woman arrived in my office with a surprised look of expectation on her pretty face when she plainly stated, "Bob... I've been told that you are "A Painter"... and so I was wondering ...if you could Paint My House..."

I let out an uncontrollable and hearty laugh, followed with, "Wanda... I'm not a "House Painter"... I cannot even lay claim to being any kind of "Arteest Painter"... What I 'paint' are Oil on Canvas Impressionistic images of Natural Landscape Scenes..." She stopped me with a gentle touch of her hand on mine and said, "Precisely... Bobby... THAT is what I would like you to do for me..." The woman elaborated that she and another co-worker...a very significant other... had recently bought a Beautiful Home in an upscale Pam Harbor, Florida.

She presented me with a single photo that would have to serve as the basis for a scaled up pencil-drawing-to-oil-painting that would require about 5 weeks of daily and very detailed attention to render her with a painting to meet her expectations that "...it should look like the only home on the block.... on a Summer's Day". I told her this was quite a challenge and that I could not swear that my skills were up to the task. She replied..." ....I can pay you $175.00 if you will do this for me.." I smiled and said, "Tell you what Kiddo... I'll do it for A Hundred because I can't swear that it will look anything like what it is that you want."

Among the myriad problems of doing hundreds of adjusted pencil sketches on a huge canvas to get the dimensions of everything recognizable to her as close as possible... I had to solve the problems of color matching the building materials of wood, stone and concrete. Then there was the problems of how to paint an Asphalt "Black-Top" Road (which is NOT Black) and how to paint Green Grass (which is NOT Green) were added tom the challenges. As the first month passed... I began to see that working in very small areas at a time as I had been doing was the right approach, Gradually... Wanda's 'Summer Home" began to appear.

On the day she came back to see the finished painting... she walked in and clasped her hands over her mouth... then she turned and looked at me with tears welling up in her big, beautiful eyes. She threw her arms around me and cried like a lost school girl. I could not console her... she just kept crying.... finally she managed to regain her composure and I left her alone with the painting. When I returned around 10 minutes later... She was gone... The Painting was gone ...and there on my desk was a plain business envelope that contained a check ...for $375.00 ... So I guess she must have liked the work. I can only hope that they were as happy and contented in the Real Home as she seemed when looking at the painting: