Portrait of a Thief

This story, first posted on 11/21/11, is reconstructed from a true occurrence that happened several years ago. I was not the artist involved:

A young artist struggling to make a name for himself was ecstatic when an industrialist, the wealthiest man in town, commissioned a portrait of himself. The price agreed on for the painting (two thousand dollars) was more than the young artist had ever received. He was determined to make this the best portrait he’d ever painted. What happened next was unexpected and you can read about it (here).

 

Pimping The Duke's Ride

When I graduated from college and decided to become a professional artist I had to figure out what type of art I wanted to specialize in. I considered painting landscapes because I enjoyed depicting mountains and streams, but I settled on portrait painting because nothing gave me greater pleasure than smearing colors on a blank surface to create an image that looked like it could talk back to you. This, for me, was pure magic.

I placed samples of my work in a few art galleries but my phone didn’t ring off the hook. For weeks it didn’t ring at all. Finally, a retired rancher called to arrange a meeting to discuss a painting he wanted to commission. His ranch was in the foothills of San Jose. I wasn’t very interested in Western art, but his collection was impressive. I recognized names on some of the paintings: Russell, Remington, Hurd. This white-haired cowboy was a serious collector. We chatted for an hour and he finally commissioned me to paint a portrait of John Wayne for his collection. Painting John Wayne wouldn’t be difficult, but I was commissioned to paint him on horseback.

Although I’d never painted a horse before, I refused to be deterred. I was determined to paint a damn fine horse. After my meeting with the old fellow I stopped at the library for books with photographs of John Wayne, returned to my studio and began sketching. After a few days I stretched a large canvas to the agreed upon dimensions and started to paint. Before long, Duke was looking back at me with his trademark lopsided grin. Everything was going smoothly, more smoothly than I’d imagined. Then I tackled the horse.

I quickly ran into trouble. I’d grown up in the suburbs and had never been close to a real horse. But I’d been to a few parades and had seen enough photographs to know that I was depicting Duke riding something that looked like it sprung from the imagination of Dr. Seuss, a cross between a giant collie and a llama. After several days of painting, repainting and scraping away mistakes, I achieved something that resembled a horse.

When I delivered the canvas, the old rancher placed my canvas on an easel, poured two whiskies and invited me to sit down. My palms were damp and I struggled not to drop my glass. This was my first commission and I really wanted to please my client. I liked the old guy but foremost in my mind was the fact that he was wealthy and could help promote my fledgling career. Unfortunately, his response was not what I’d hoped for.

“It's a fine likeness of John Wayne,” he said, pausing to sip his whiskey. “But why did you paint him on a Mongolian war pony?”

I’d chosen a poor time to take a gulp of whiskey. His question caught me by surprise. I wasn’t accustomed to drinking whiskey and sprayed his Navaho rug. He dashed over to me and started slapping me on the back. I was humiliated and wished I could change places with the head of the stuffed elk on his wall.

Sometimes fate gives you a second chance. It turned out that the old cowboy was quite a gentleman. He said, “Don’t feel bad. Even great painters have weaknesses. Goya was one of the best painters ever, but the man couldn’t paint a horse to save his life. He painted the King and Queen of Spain riding giant pigs.”

He knew a lot about horses. He showed me around his ranch and introduced me to his horses. I even sat on one, my first and only time in a saddle. I took my painting home and reworked it until I was satisfied. When I returned it to him, his broad smile told me I’d succeeded.

I’ve painted many portraits since then, but that was my one and only horse. Unfortunately, I can’t watch a John Wayne western without picturing him astride my first attempt at an equine. But there was one role where he would have looked just fine sitting on a Mongolian war pony.

My One And Only Time On Stage

So there I was, in a theater packed with a thousand people, all eyes riveted on me as I stepped out onto the stage. I felt weak as a blade of grass and I could feel my heart beating in the middle of my forehead. My palms were wet and my shoes were filling with ass sweat. If I were wax I’d have melted away.

The stage was situated in a new multi-million dollar center being dedicated to the music director of one of the most prestigious colleges in the state. This gentleman, in addition to being responsible for his college’s musical excellence, also founded a nationally renowned jazz festival. He was being honored this evening, but he wasn’t in attendance; he’d passed away from cancer the year before.

So what was I doing there? I don’t sing or dance, and the only music I could play was half of Oh! Susanna on a harmonica. I was there because I’d been hired by the college’s faculty board to paint a portrait to honor the deceased. I’d entered a competition to paint the outgoing president of the college and didn’t get that job, so I was surprised when the Dean called to inform me that I’d been the unanimous choice selected to portray the late music director.

I couldn’t believe my luck; the president’s portrait would hang in the campus library crowded together with a dozen other paintings, whereas this portrait would hang on a wall by itself in the entry of the new music auditorium.

For reasons too complicated to explain there were only two photographs available for me to work from. One was thirty years old and showed the man in robust health, while the other was snapped a few months before he died, his face ravaged by cancer. My task was to combine the two into a pleasing image that honored and celebrated the beloved educator.

The portrait needed to be finished and framed in time for the auditorium’s dedication scheduled in one month. I worked hard, knowing my painting would face the critical gaze of the college board, which included the school’s art director. When the painting was far enough along I met with the board to show them my progress. I’d been through this process before and knew the ropes: the art director would need to validate his opinion by finding something wrong with my painting, so I intentionally made a small mistake for him to find in the subject’s eye.

Sure enough, the art director rose from his chair. He actually (I swear to God) held a thumb up to my portrait and said, “The left eye doesn’t track properly with the right.”

I pretended to study my canvas, and finally admitted, “You’re absolutely right. How could I have missed that?”

I’d brought my portable palette with me and I quickly painted out the white highlight in the left eye and repainted it a millimeter to the left, where the highlight belonged.

“Now it’s perfect,” the art director said, beaming.

Everyone was happy, except me when I was informed the Dean had decided to have me stand on the stage beside the draped portrait when it was unveiled at the ceremony. Back then I was painfully shy and tried to get out of being dragged onstage, but the Dean insisted.

And that’s how I came to be standing on that stage. I was perspiring in an auditorium with a thousand people, faculty and students of the late music director who’d flown in from all over the world. The dead man’s family was present, I was told, including his eighty-year-old mother who’d been flown in from Florida. At that moment it occurred to me that among all those people, I was the only one present who’d never laid eyes on the man I’d painted.

What if the painting didn’t look like the guy? What if I’d exposed too much of the cancer that had claimed him. A thousand doubts preyed on my mind, so much so that I barely noticed when the Dean finished his speech, mentioned my name and pulled away the cloth covering the portrait.

The silence was deafening. I fought the urge to run, not that I’d have gotten far since I couldn’t find my legs. Time seemed to fossilize. And then there was a shriek, more like a wail. The eighty-year-old mother was standing, and sobbing, and blowing kisses at me. The entire auditorium burst into applause. I’d succeeded. At a gathering after the unveiling I was clapped on the back by those who’d known the music director and told I’d captured him perfectly.

The next morning when I stepped on the bathroom scale (I foolishly did such things back then) I saw that I’d lost nearly five pounds, no doubt from all that sweating. I decided then and there that painting portraits for a living wasn’t for me. I didn’t think my heart could take it, not for a crummy few hundred bucks.

Have you ever had an uncomfortable on-stage moment?