Austin and Alice

Since I am partially colorblind, I have never felt quite as confident with painting as I have with drawing. Even so, I was more pleased with the way this painting of my father turned out than any other painting I have done.

By the way, my father is Austin, not Alice.

Painted in 1982 (I think), the painting was an experimental oil painting. I had never painted a portrait before that was set in a natural background. Up until that time, all my paintings were fantastic and dealt with imaginary beings and settings. This painting of my father was inspired by a photograph of him out in the Mojave Desert, which was one of his favorite places to be. It captures him well and anyone who knew him would recognize the likeness and the appropriateness of the setting.

I may have tried to incorporate too many different influences but even twenty-five years later I still find the combination pleasing. The upper background was prepared with a textured gesso and the painting was inspired by Monet. For the foreground I prepared my own mixture of Japan drier and gesso that forced the surface to crack, which was painted over with a wash so that the paint would seep into the cracks to give them definition.

In the 1970s I was listening to albums on vinyl records, which meant that while you listened you could analyze the artwork on the large album covers. The album covers that impressed me the most were the Yes covers by Roger Dean and the Welcome to My Nightmare cover by Drew Struzan. With apologies to my father, this album cover influenced how I rendered him in the above painting. Struzan imitates a 1920's stylization that is crisp and clear and has patterned embellishments, that are usually seen in drawings and advertisements rather than paintings. These appear as sharp edged flat lines for shadows and highlights. (Note Alice Cooper's top-hat, hair, hands and the bottom of his vest.)

The painting of my dad is not as crisp nor as precisely stylized as Struzan's but it was the main influence to the style. Due to the informal setting of my father's portrait, in contrast to the formal setting for Alice Cooper, I rendered the lines in my dad's shirt more organically and not so rigidly as in Alice's tuxedo.

For me though, the best thing about the painting is not who influenced my technique; it is that it reminds me of the person who most influenced my ideal for character and integrity.

Welcome to My Nightmare - Artist: Drew Struzan

The Flock of Sheep

There once was a flock of sheep
Who eyed a green hillside so steep
The shepherd ran away
And the wolves came to play
That unfortunate flock of sheep

Parsley Lovers Do Exist

Killers From Space

My wife has observed more than once that I am the "other demographic" that people talk about but she never believed those people actually existed. Saint Austin's Pub is the place to be for the "other demographic" - including the types of movies that we watch. This is why we will never be highlighted on Google's "Blogs of Note". But the "other demographic" (OD) would never openly care about such a thing - all the while secretly wishing to find itself there.

Even as a child, I was a member of the OD. I am not sure if it was because I already was a member of the OD, or the situation that I am about to describe was part of my formation into the OD; you decide since actually I really don't care. When I was about 11 or 12 years old in the early '70s, a new UHF TV station came on the air that clearly had no money to pay for programming. They had no commercials; just old movies and very old re-run TV shows and public service announcements from time to time. All of the movies were in black and white and fell into the lower than "B-movie" category. Many of the movies were westerns, old Saturday morning movie serials, silent movies, Sherlock Holmes, horror movies of such as might be named, "The Bride of the Second-Cousin of Frankenstein's Podiatrist", and all of the Godzilla movies. This is the age at which I graduated from Saturday morning cartoons to the Saturday afternoon matinee triple-feature. My parents ought to have said, "Enough is enough. Go outside and play!" But who knew? TV was still a relatively new concept. We still had a B&W TV and everyone still thought Benjamin Spock knew what he was talking about. Speaking of Dr Spock, my favorite of these less-than-B-movies were the science fictions. Wow! Giant tarantulas. A giant woman. A giant man-eating bird. The end of the world. Man-eating plants, and scores of invaders from space. What could be better?

So, it was with great delight, as I was standing in line at Walmart a few weeks ago, that my eye fell upon a DVD titled, "The Sci-Fi Invasion!" - "4 science fiction classics" for a dollar! It was too good to be true and of course I bought it. Later at home, I presented the incredible cultural and entertainment value of these movies to my wife with such enthusiasm that I actually talked her into watching the first one with me. I will admit that the first movie was not that great and so without giving it a second chance, my wife dismissed this entire entertainment genre as one that belonged solely to the OD. I however, was not put off by this one minor set-back and continued to watch the other three movies - alone.

I am pleased to tell you that I was not disappointed. The second movie on the DVD was "Killers from Space" starring none other than Peter Graves of Mission Impossible fame. I would have paid THREE dollars, for that movie all by itself. It was great! It had everything: mind control, bug-eyed alien invaders, USAF planes, pilots and generals, a nuclear explosion, a psycho-ward, giant lizards, giant spiders, giant cockroaches, old cars like my grandparents drove, weird desert scenes, an underground alien HQ. What more could anyone want from a movie?

By the way, if this guy shows up on your TV screen, watch out!

New Words

I have added the following new words to my dictionary.

Insomania. (n) The volatile and unpleasant mood and actions of one who is suffering from a lack of sleep. Insomania is also known to cause collateral suffering to the family, friends and co-workers of the insomaniac (see below).

Insomaniac. (n) One who is under the influence of insomania.

Ecumenace. (n) One who is committed to the obliteration of the unique identity, vision or purpose of a church or denomination, for the sake ecumenism or unity.

Feel free to add these new words to your vocabulary. No fees or royalties are required - just leave a tip in the jar next to the pretzels.

Finches

Big F, little f; what begins with f?

A flurry of finches fussing over fine filigree.

Saint Austin's Pub also has an aviary full of Zebra finches.

I realize this is a family pub; so I hope my customers are not offended by this photo of the bathing beauties in their hot tub.

Several months ago Mrs Augustine bought me an aviary full of finches. They aren't annoying like parrots. Finches don't want attention like parrots. They are content simply to have fresh water and fresh seed. They don't squawk like parrots; they just chatter. Their conversation reminds me of the song from the Music Man, "Pick-a-little, Talk-a-little" While I might be able to write or talk knowledgeably about various types of beer, ale, porter and stout; and I might be able to discuss the pros and cons of different fountain pens, I don't know anything about finches other than what seems to make them content. Although, like people that isn't always easy to figure out - finches are constantly fussing and fighting with one another. "That's my perch!" "No, that's my perch!" "Get out of my nest!" "Who do you think you are sitting next to my girlfriend?" It goes on like that all day. Fortunately, once the sun goes down they calm down: "do not let the sun go down on your anger" I guess they know their Bible verses.

One of the most entertaining things to do when you visit the Pub (we are easily entertained) is take your pint outside and sit in one of the chairs surrounding the aviary and watch the ever busy finches. Bath time is the most entertaining.

These finches are drying and preening after morning bath time.

Salvador Dali

Almost one year ago, I posted a drawing of A Young Girl by Haley and compared it to a drawing by Salvador Dali titled "Imaginary Portrait of Lautreamont at age 19 Obtained by the Paranoic-Critical Method" which is hanging in the Chicago Art Institute. However, at the time I posted "A Young Girl", I could not recall the title of the Dali sketch, so my description and comparison were incomplete. I recently stumbled across this sketch by Vee mack (posted above), which provides that information and a very rough sketch of how the Dali drawing appears - very rough! Dali's sketch is brilliantly and softly rendered in such a way that his pencil work looks much more painterly than any drawing I have ever seen.

While I am impressed with Dali's technical expertise, the philosophical ideas represented by Surrealism (and Dada) are of the most destructive form. Consider the definitions given in the Surrealist Manifesto:

Breton wrote the manifesto of 1924 (another was issued in 1929) that defines the purposes of the group and includes citations of the influences on Surrealism, examples of Surrealist works and discussion of Surrealist automatism. He defined Surrealism as:

Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.

Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.

Wikipedia offers this further definition:

The English word "Surrealism" is a mis-translation of the French word "Surréalisme." The correct translation should be "Superrealism." Breton somewhere said that the "surréel is to the réel what the surnaturel is to the naturel." English-speakers say "supernatural". The reason why this matters is that the prefix "surr-" in English is often, not always, associated with the Latin prefix "sub" e.g. surreptitious (Fr. subreptice), surrogate (Fr. subrogé), implying exactly the opposite of the intended meaning.

Breton would later qualify the first of these definitions by saying "in the absence of conscious moral or aesthetic self-censorship," and by his admission through subsequent developments, that these definitions were capable of considerable expansion.

This excerpt from the above definition sums up the destructive nature of surreal/dada thought: "Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation." The call of the surrealist is to pursue a world view that elevates dreams, chaos, deconstruction and self-absorption in opposition to any moral or reasonable "preoccupation". No moral compass. No reliance on reason. The subversion of aesthetics (beauty). What is the natural consequence of such a world view? Imagine such a world as the surrealist propose. Oh, don't imagine it, just watch TV and read the Newspaper.

If you think I am exaggerating, consider the quotes of surrealists posted at Wikipedia:

• "I could spend my whole life prying loose the secrets of the insane. These people are honest to a fault, and their naiveté has no peer but my own."
• "We are still living under the reign of logic: this, of course, is what I have been driving at. But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest."
• "Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful."
• "Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word Memory begins."
• "Surrealism does not allow those who devote themselves to it to forsake it whenever they like. There is every reason to believe that it acts on the mind very much as drugs do; like drugs, it creates a certain state of need and can push man to frightful revolts."
• "In this realm as in any other, I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned that all others before him have failed, refuses to admit defeat, sets off from whatever point he chooses, along any other path save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can."
• "It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere."
• "The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd."

The Surrealist Manifesto was written in 1924. Do you see how artists and philosophers, even from as far back as the 1920s, have influenced the thinking of unwitting teenagers of the present? The last two quotes, in particular, echo the madness of the Columbine shootings. Never fall for the mistaken notion that the ideas of distant philosophers and academics do not eventually appear in the hearts and minds of the common man.