The new Sea Gull was spectacular. There was so much more room, and more room meant another place to hear music and dance. I would also spend more time and more of my money there. I was a moth to the flame.
My life, money, art, worry to the point of losing sleep, I couldn’t figure - which had priority? How does one keep it all together? I think I could put it all together somehow in painting. That is what an artist is supposed to do. We have to make some distinction what is truly happening from what appears to be happening around us. Some artistic expressions are easier to get to the truth than reality. That is why it is necessary to put clarity in the forefront, slow reality down.
Painting was my magic to do that. The process healed me; it was not escapism.
Winter 1977 was especially hard that year. Hard because of the chilling climate but also the climate of money, my overall thermometer was close to freezing. I got frightened enough to look to San Francisco for work. I risked a trip down there. I made cold calls, walking in from the street. I showed my portfolio around and found a gallery that would take some of the work I brought with me. Later, my neighbor at Toad Hall, Lee Larsen, attempted to be my agent. She did really well for me, but the percentages didn't work out for either of us. She went to work as a bartender at the 'Gull.' What we both discovered was that the galleries in SF wanted large oil paintings to sell. I came back to meditate on the problem.
I liked the size of a door - its proportions. I learned its design limitations as I moved the horizontal “Pied Piper” around my kitchen. I had to stand the canvas upright to get into my refrigerator. I did like the idea of a door, a vertical painting. I was used to the idea of a window into my art. Hey! A doorway really worked for me. I made stretcher bars at 30" by 80", stretched the canvas, and waited. It would be the same size as “The Pied Piper.”
This is where I may think my memory is suspect? Does the egg remember the chicken? This is blurry.
Are you, Ghosts, going to be any help in this?
Huh?
During those creative moments I wasn't worried about my life, money, art, sleep, I threw myself into Improv theater or Theater (notice the capital letter). What was ‘hot’ at that time was a local production of "Lion in Winter." Produced at the Art Center, the cast was composed of people I knew. The theater sat 90 people; the play would run for five weekends. The stage, 25 feet wide, had to recreate 1100 AD. It had to bring to life King Henry II of England, his conflict with his wife and his castle. I loved the play, and the cast, but I kept looking at the-out-of-town director out of the corner of my eye. He was part male beauty, part snake. I was mesmerized. He knew that and he used it. He used it. My hand would shake when I drew him in action directing actors, so I focused on the cast. Hey! Romance and danger have always caught my attention. I still have an overactive imagination that draws me away from the gravity of the moment.
Well. Don't reveal that, you ... they'll shun you!
Stop right there. No one has ever accused me of not being courageous. Besides, at this time of my life being 60+, telling the truth is as seductive as dark chocolate. I yield. So back off.
This cast became an immediate family. Family, the actor cast to play the ‘King’ was my most trusted friend and village therapist Victor Biondo. The ‘Queen’ was Marilyn Solomon, art maven, bed and breakfast owner, party thrower, and a wonderfully funny confidant.
I sat through all rehearsals and sketched the cast in production. I became the graphic artist and designer for the show's advertising, posters, and programs.
The production played to full houses. The program I designed was collected. I had a great experience with group creativity. My drawings of the cast were admired. I got my first taste of local celebrity. I did come to my senses and didn't get too close to the snake. Every time he came close to me, even to look at my drawing, I tasted tin. Not gin, tin. I never could get what that was about. Victor said, “This can’t be the first time this happened. Can you remember anything like this happening in your past?” Marilyn said, “Fix yourself a drink, Honey, and come over and sit by me.” I stopped asking why.
So don't you go there - Ghost.
So, of all the things to do, why paint the “Princess and the Pea?”
The story, joke, myth, metaphor, concerns sensitivity. The idea that only a sensitive princess is worthy of marrying a prince. The King and Queen, parents of the prince, hire a wizard to test all the princesses to choose one who would be good enough to marry their son. The princess, who wins, turns out to be a regular person. Well if not regular then, in this story, a goof. The moral of the story is one of those great equalizers. Anybody can be chosen for a mate, one's position in society doesn't matter. It's a good laugh that anybody would be so sensitive to lose sleep caused by something as small as a pea beneath a hundred mattresses. The King and Queen are laughing stock. Stupid moves by the ruling class are nothing new. Check history, check Fairy Tales.
I was losing sleep for fear of not having enough money. If it had not been for Victor, King Henry II of ‘The Lion in Winter’, I don't see how I would have made my rent for the next month.
Yes, I misspent my youthful days here playing after work. But who didn't? There wasn’t that much work around anyway.
When I finally called Victor for advice, he said, "Money, is that all." He handed me three hundred dollars, refused interest, and had no expectation of when I should return the total amount.
So, Victor would forever be a ‘King’ and Marilyn forever a ‘Queen.’ I think they must have been in cahoots. There was chemistry and symmetry in our friendships.
Princess and the Pea the painting - the princess was Marnie Stearns. Marnie was Ginny Stearn’s sister. Ginny, AKA Ginny Gingerroot, was an artist I met at a local party. And Marnie, at the time, lived in her shadow. How I interpreted they were princesses was because they lived on old family money, drove clean cars. Ginny built her own house by hand and made shockingly funny representations of tourists. I admired her art. She was fearless. Marnie went into the healing arts. She studied massage. Lomi massage was much like Rolfing, deep tissue work. The style was long hard pressure between your muscles down to the bone. On occasion my bones. I thought Marnie was a bit overly enthusiastic. She got her elbow into my neck so deep, in surprise of the memory of my own birth, I screamed out, "Push!" I carried that bruise on my neck like a huge hickey. I found her style of massage "suspiciously domineering." Marnie became my princess, forever sensitive to a little pea.
I did feel this new family of mine was composed of friends, but I was sometimes disheartened to be the poor relative. I’d get over that.
In the painting I stacked the mattresses to the full height of the canvas. I put, the Princess, Marnie on the top of the bed - wide eyed at the skylight. The full moon, inquisitive, looks down at her. At the bottom of the canvas, I painted the King, Victor, my therapist - the Queen was Marilyn, my confidant - and, me. I became the wizard with the pea. I'm shocked I took so much responsibility with such a little thing for my lack of sleep, worrying about life, money, and art. After all was said and done, there was love. The family portraits that line each side of the canvas have bleary eyes from lack of sleep. This image for the painting all seemed to fit and it did represent the truth - at the time.
Well. Go deeper.
My paint was commercial Windsor Newton. The medium was extra special. The medium I chose to make from a recipe came from just after the Renaissance. A Dutch medium the Flemish Masters used to mix into their hand ground paints. One-third by volume boiled linseed oil - one-third turpentine - and one third dissolved Dammar varnish crystals. In mixture, it made my oil paint behave like butter, or cream, or fine brandy. I would have conversations with Hals, Brugel, and Rembrandt.
Ummm, dead artists - SO - sensuous.
Yes, like many artists, I’m in love with my medium. The only thing that was of concern was the cold of that winter. The paint took three or four days to solidify. To speed up the process I had to use ‘Japan dryer’. A chemical additive, it oxidizes the oil and sets up the paint faster. If one uses too much ‘dryer’ the paint cracks when it dries. Mixing paint was like a dance between substance and time. The rule was - paint with more fat (oil) in the medium, over lean, less oil with more turpentine in the medium. This is not an artistic tradition, this admonition was to keep the integrity of the paint from cracking. Later applications of paint must remain flexible. I became so satisfied working with fine quality materials, I felt recompensed for not getting any money up front. I hung out with these interesting imaginary characters and painters when I painted. And, I could again use the fine brushes I brought with me from L.A.
Just an aside: Henry Miller, the author of “Tropic of Cancer,” wrote a small book named, “To Paint is To Love Again.”
This is a long way of telling you I made ‘The Princess and The Pea’ to impress a gallery in San Francisco. Galleries there wanted big paintings. I needed to get out of what seemed to be an endless cycle of next to no money.
My friend, Cricket, 7 years old, Christopher, Lee Larsen's son would hang out after school at my cabin while I worked on the painting. He would comment on my progress. Often I would give him paper and crayons to make pictures while I worked. We talked about Fairy Tales like kids today talk Movies. During one of Lee’s visits, she suggested I show the painting to David who owned the Sea Gull before I took it to the gallery in San Francisco.
David Jones liked the painting, as much as he did ‘The Pied Piper.’ He paid cash on the spot, then surprised me by saying he wanted it over the bar between the rafters. In that conversation he commissioned me to do three more. I was flabbergasted. More Fairy Tale paintings to work out how I saw and could reflect on my life – my jaw dropped open. What a gift.
He said he would also pay for the frame if I would choose one for the painting, and for the others he commissioned too. All of these transactions would be at a good price. This let me pay Victor back and kept me in rent and groceries during the winter and off my bicycle during the rainy season.
San Francisco was far away. Mendocino was a great place to live.
Well. So. Could you live happily ever after?
I think I got married to the Sea Gull. That was the start.
