A week of signs and portents of things to come: Part 2

Why I’ve been painting signs when I should have been writing posts

So I’ve been painting signs when I should have been writing substack posts. I could have ranted about Trump but you already know he threatens our way of life. I could have analyzed the propositions but I’ll save that for later. (It’s pretty simple. Yes on Proposition 139. Yes on school bonds.) Anyone want to convince me to vote for a California style jungle primary system?

These issues, including Lake, Loomer and World War III brewing in the Middle East, couldn’t tear me away from my new addiction. Starts with an A. No, it’s not Acid. It’s Acrylic paint. I love its plasticity.

It’s a paint that dries faster than Tucson Laundry on the line.

It can go on thick or thin as water color.

I painted one sign. Then another. And for the first time in years I found I’d started something I could not stop doing. Stuffing donuts down my craw I can stop. Gummies I can pace. But painting signs? I can’t stop.

I painted seven signs and then I decided to paint more signs. “Cat Ladies for Kamala”. “Liz Cheney was Right”. I enjoyed painting Kamala’s blue heel crushing the red MAGA hat, symbolizing her defeat of Trump. It required patience to paint. And it was joyful to look at it.

I learned from a drawing class at the Tucson Drawing Studio to slow down. To let go of outside stresses. To focus on the art in front of you. Getting into the zen of sketching a still life there week after week was a memorable sensation. At 69 my hand is finally steady. A feeling like no other.

Forty years of chasing deadlines and beating every clock ticking in front of me it was enlightening to make art simply for the pleasure of the act.

And these nine signs make it a total of 36 signs painted so far.

I painted two more. Time to clean the brushes and seal the paint tubes.

I’m going to take a break next week, I’ m going to be sleeping above a tavern in 1749 with my wife (wench) for a week at Williamsburg. My estate is in the care of my two adult sons. God help me.

When we return the following week I’m going to unpack, nap and go back to painting signs. Once I hit fifty I’ll figure out what to do with them.

Fundraiser?

Auction?

Organize a sign waving rally? Hand ‘em out there?

A march?

The more time I spent painting these signs the more I recalled the days when I was a page designer in Oklahoma City at The Oklahoma City Times. I would create feature page headlines selecting just the right font to compliment the story. On Saturday nights I airbrushed football photos delivered to me in pneumatic tubes that went thump. The rest of the week I drew cartoon illustrations for stories or I illustrated op-ed pieces for the Comment section. I collected catalogs of type fonts and books of Japanese calligraphy and copied the typography within. When I started drawing political cartoons at the Daily Press in Newport News I began hand lettering my captions using a clean style I picked up from architects. Crisp. Geometric. When I shifted to drawing in a Hanna Barbera/ Warner Brothers manner I went to a looser script style of lettering.

I liked inking with flexible nib pens. So expressive and responsive. Same is true when the media is a brush.

When I lived in Virginia, I was terribly homesick. A childish whiner. I felt I was living in exile. The forests made me claustrophobic. I missed the stars. I grew to love the mist and the foghorns and the dogwood blossoms. I bought a house in Newport News and I remember standing in my living room, on a rainy day staring at our large framed poster. It was a photo-realistic water color painting of a mountain lion by Nick Wilson. What a masterful hand. What a painter. Nick captured the light of home that I pined for that day long ago living in exile in beautiful green and grey Virginia.

Oh, how I missed the Catalinas.

My Harris yard signs look beautiful in the Tucson sunlight.

Friday I painted as Harris came to southern Arizona to talk immigration. Her policies are smart and practical and Trump never got Mexico to pay for his wall and all he has is a concept of a plan.

Gallego is humiliating Lake. Walz is about to whip J.D.’s weird ass and I have to stop painting so I can pack for my time travel sanity break vacation. We’ll be flying over hurricane heartbreak on our way to the Chesapeake Bay area early next week. Prayers and thoughts and Red Cross donations can’t ease my guilt over my fascination with the Threads catastrophe posts by hurricane survivors. I am looking forward to returning to the Colonial Triangle. I recall it as being lovely in the rain. Jamestown on the James River can be gray and misty. By the time the fife and drum corps marches down Duke of Gloucester Street it should be sunny. If they’re drawing a crowd in front of a tavern with a recruiter looking for patriots to join Washington’s 4th Virginia Regiment I may sign on. My great great great grandfather on my mom’s side did.

We got this. We’re going to win. Like the posters say: