Art World Interlude

With the recent death of Christian and wildly popular painter Thomas Kinkade I pause to do a random mind dump on the world of art that hangs on walls.

Every summer from 1999 to 2001 I taught a week long cartooning class for kids at Western Washington University. I took the class to meet a real artist, Jodi Bergsma. She was not only a fabulous painter but accommodating to the kids. I asked her if she ever read “how to paint” books and she laughed saying, “I’m too busy painting.”

The next year I invited another local professional artist to class, Lanny Little. He, too, was a smash hit. Not only was he generous with answering kids’ questions, but his tromp l’oil paintings were breath taking.

When I was a youth pastor in the 70s the pastor chided me for hanging this Tooker print on my wall. “It’s surreal!” he complained. Duh.  But he being the boss, I in dutiful and deferring fashion, I took it down.

When I was a pastor of a Lutheran church Vicki and I loved this Renoir painting which hung in our living room. A guest (cold matter physicist working on his PhD) chided me for hanging “A picture of drunk people on your wall!” Duh. Again, in deference to his opinion I sold that print in a garage sale.

A collection of essays by a New York art critic was so informative that I sent the guy a 60 page hard copy, desk top published collection of my grief processing, artistic musings, DIGGING DOWN, DRAWING OUT. Since I quoted him so often in the text I thought he’d get a kick out of it. I’ll never know; he never answered back.

Vicki and I took a cruise to Alaska on our 25^th wedding anniversary. During the on board art auction the combination of romantic love with too much Champaign resulted in the purchase of several art pieces by Alexander Chen and Anatole Krasnyasnski which I still love.

 I never bought a Thomas Kinkade.