Many moons ago, way back in 1968 or thereabouts I do believe, I commissioned a mate to do a series of oil paintings on canvas for a little group with which I was associated.
And practically ever since I’ve been into this photography lark I’ve been promising myself to photograph them and post the pics to Flickr.
Now there’s a couple of odd things about these paintings.
For starters, I’ve still got ‘em!
That may not seem particularly odd to those who don’t know me very well, but to those who do (all one of them by my present reckoning) it’ll seem just far too weird.
Cos I’m not known for retaining too many things from the past. And in fact, from the distant past (which is what ’68 is) these are the only things I have retained.
The other odd thing is… I’m not too sure why! But it seems that throughout my many changes of residence (and even those times when I’ve not had any residence) these things have somehow managed to tag along.
How curious.
And the final odd thing is this… I’ve just posted to Flickr pics of five of them. Yet I know damn well I actually have two more.
But do you think I can find them? Can I hell!
They’ve gotta be somewhere, but I’ve looked in all the obvious places (and most of the places that aren’t so obvious) to absolutely no avail whatsoever.
The bloody things appear to have done a disappearing act on me somewhere.
Should they mysteriously reappear at some stage though you can be sure I’ll snap the little buggers and post the pics to Flickr. Assuming I’m still messing around with photography by then. For nothing’s certain in this uncertain world.
Now, I have to say that these pics I’ve taken aren’t the greatest. For a number of reasons but mainly on account of screwing up the lighting so that one side of each pic is darker than t’other. I certainly seem to find something new to mess up with each pic session, don’t I? But I can’t be asked to re-shoot. Not today at least.
I also have to observe that the paintings themselves aren’t in the best of condition.
Years of accumulated dust, tobacco smoke staining, incense smoke staining, and the general wear and tear involved in following me around from place to place have taken their toll, to say nothing of extreme fluctuations in temperature, exposure to damp, and various other mishaps that have befallen them in their travels.
That said, they still constitute what I call real art. Painted by a little-known artist (an utterly fascinating guy named John Sanderson… probably long gone by now) they may not be worth much in the grand scheme of things but to me they now have value beyond price.
Yup, *those* are art!
Nice paintings.
Yes… though I really should have looked after them a little better
One day maybe I’ll take them to an expert restorer for some treatment.
You had me with the first picture. It seems John Sanderson and I have something in common, a Love for horses. Excellent Blog! I am not one to carry much with me when Life requires I move along. So when I was reading how you are not sure why these paintings seemed to always make the cut, hence travelling with you, I smiled. You captured that experience perfectly with your words. It was funny as well! Another thing that is ART here is the photographs you took of them. I find each one mesmerizing and they are not poorly done, I see no flaws in them. Pictures of ‘pictures.’ Ironic. Beautiful. Sanderson huh? Sometimes the best art is rarely seen. Oh! The two paintings you cannot find? The trick is to stop looking so hard or looking for them at all. Why? My experience has shown me that when I am looking for something that I know is in my room/house and I get more and more irritated as I look; I never find it. Then one day there it is. Either the powers that be giggled and gave them back or I finally ‘saw’ them when I stopped looking. Try it? As for value? Sentimental value trumps the price tag everytime. You knew that though, huh? *grin* xo!
Yeah, that trick of stop looking so hard for something seems to work most times for me as well… its pretty much what I’m doing now. Its a bit like when you can’t remember the title of a song or something. I find that if I just stop trying so hard then, a few hours later, it’ll pop into my head without warning.
John was a real interesting guy. Spent a lot of his young adult years as a sheep farmer in Argentina, which of course entailed horse riding a hell of a lot. Then (I seem to recollect) he spent another whole lump of years in Botswana (its prob’ly called something else nowadays!). Had a real love of wildlife and many of his paintings were of African wild animals.