Editorials by Forrest Fenn - Artists are getting old

Artists Are Getting Old
by Forrest Fenn

I got a lunch offer the other day from an old friend whom I had not seen for a while. He’s an important artist, and everyone has him atop their A list. We have the kind of relationship where we can get nose to nose and later laugh it off. Lots of jokes and loud talk. He’s a burly man and his hands look weather-worn and always smell like kerosene. That’s why I try to sit upwind from him. Our mutual respect comes from my having been a dealer for almost as long as he’s been a painter.

Now, I really love this guy because he started at the bottom of the art food chain and paid his dues longer and harder than most folks. Twenty-two years of his life were spent as an illustrator back East as he honed his trade. Finally, he decided that he had had enough of “over-educated art directors” telling him which way the mule should face on his canvas or why the rocks in his river were the wrong color. “They knew more about what I was going to paint than I did, for crimanny sake,” he said.

One day he told one of his high-octane editors what he was gonna do with the butt end of one of his brushes if that guy didn’t get off of his case - and pronto. Evidently that didn’t float very well so my friend soon found himself outside trying to find a cab. So he packed up his wife and his brushes, put some air in the tires of his old Ford “Bullet,” and headed west, finally settling in Arizona.

Over time he became very popular and, the prices of his work seeped over into the middle five digits even at auctions which are the true test. All the dealers called him for work, and show sponsors demanded his presence. Girls probably chased him down the street for all I know. It went around that a woman once threw her panties at him at an art opening. The only underwear that was ever thrown at me was my own, and I caught a cold walking home in the rain.

But he is a good painter so the list of buyers who were waiting for his work got so long that it was rumored he was keeping the names rolled up on toilet paper.

Anyway, even as the knowledge of his importance settled in he still had memories of “the under-talented, commercial jerks telling me what the hell to do.” He spit those words out like they were a health threat of some sort. That should have been ancient history, but then one day a wealthy lady collector found him sitting in Furr’s Cafeteria eating a corned beef and cabbage dish. He told me, “A little bit of that female woman went way too far. She thought that she could direct me to make her a large painting of prairie dogs, OF PRAIRIE DOGS.” The look in his eyes as he said those words told me that he was about one volt short of a blown-out fuse. “I don’t have to do that anymore, and now I am painting only for myself, whatever I want, always just for myself.”

Well, that was a perfect time for me to just shut up and not be my normal saccharine self. But of course I didn’t, so I was. I told him that he was no different from the rest of us and that his ego wouldn’t allow him to be unaffected by what others thought of him and what he painted. His eyelids fluttered when I said that he would paint whatever he wanted only as long as his adoring public approved. His ice cream quickly melted as he slowly leaned forward in his chair. I knew I had said the wrong thing.

Now I am sure that somewhere in a peaceful mountain meadow the spring daffodils are gently blooming as the morning mist settles on a tranquil lake. But let me tell you this; that’s not what was about to happen in that poor restaurant. One little old lady in the corner tried to hide behind her coffee cup.

As I yelled that he was over-heated, he yelled that I was over-rated. It went on, and we found ourselves suddenly alone. I think the cute little waitress, whose tight skirt was about four inches too short to be long enough, tripped over a ham trying to get out the back door.

Anyway, during a lull when we both were trying to catch our breaths I said, in words so soft that my sainted mother would finally have been proud, “Look, I’ll tell you what; you and I are going out to this little deserted island I know about. I’ll give you all the brushes you want and all of the paints you want and all of the canvasses you want and…..” He started to raise his hand but I raised my hand higher. I wasn’t through yet. “Every time you finish a painting I am gonna buy that thing off of the easel and run out under a palm tree and burn it. I submit that you won’t ever make another painting. So you are not painting just for yourself, are you?”

Now, it’s a given that when this guy gets really mad the skin on his face tightens, which pulls his ears out. Some have said that it makes him look like a taxicab with both doors open. It was not a good sign. For the next few minutes I just sat there not daring to move, kinda like the string tag on a nun’s bra, while he carefully explained to me why I should buy a first class ticket into personality rehab, and he used a lot of adjectives that I’d never even heard about.

I just don’t know about these artist guys anymore. They must be getting old. And I sure as hell hate to pay for lunch.