Rick Koster: Hunger-inducing fine art
Apr. 26—I used to be fairly adept at guitar and bass, but those days are gone. Arthritis has arrived. Anymore, it's frustrating to pick up an instrument and try to nuance intricate fingerpicking or funk-sparkled thumb-popping techniques.
Truth told, it was similarly frustrating at 27, too, because I lied about the "fairly adept" part. At best, I labored to recreate three-note ZZ Top basslines, and any "intricate fingerpicking" usually happened during breaks between sets, when I'd stand at the bar and pilfer green olives from the garnish station in sprightly fashion.
But I can't even do THAT anymore. I fumble the olives and they plop on the floor.
It's a shame. My fingers simply can't obey my brain's commands, so my dusty instruments hang forlornly on guitar stands in the cobwebbed corner of my home office, draped with dirty T-shirts and a blood-crusted beach towel that I don't want to wash because it's a souvenir from a long-ago vacation to Mogadishu.
Recently, though, sleepily watching an animated version of "Glengarry Glen Ross" on the Cartoon Network — with Fred Flintstone, Popeye and a barely recognizable Felix the Cat as Richard, Shelley the Machine and Blake, respectively — I perked up when one of those Old Person infomercials came on. Much of the footage showed pleasant, healthy codgers like me, standing painlessly in front of easels, nimbly painting colorful landscapes on large canvases.
It hit me: What if painting can help my arthritis?!
I bought supplies and decided the Old Masters and their still lifes seemed a fine way to assimilate the basics. And it wasn't long before I realized the Old Masters LOVED fruit.
Those folks would paint a pear for you! Grapes, too. Lotta grapes in those still lifes.
(Grammar note: my computer's auto-correct mechanism insists that I should be typing "still lives" but I don't think that's accurate in Art Land, so I have to keep changing it back. So, Peter Paul Rubens, if you're out there, let me know which is the preferred term.)
Here's the thing. I'm doing OK with my still life paintings, but I'm REALLY tired of fruit. Bananas! Cantaloupes! Apples! Cherries and strawberries! Not so many grapefruits, though, so I'm not sure what it was about them that made the Old Masters not want to paint them.
Besides, the Old Masters didn't focus entirely on fruit. Any enthusiastic European museums-goer can find still lifes with bread, cheese, fish and even songbirds — for yes, in that golden age of "how did THAT plague happen?," folks frequently ate songbirds. Weirdos.
But we were talking about "beyond fruit." An artist named Antoine Vollen painted a canvas titled "Mound of Butter," which aptly describes one of my favorite meals. Studying the painting, though, I think it could just as easily have been called "Antoine Spilled a Large Vat of Yellow Paint On Canvas."
Anyway, it's high time we have a NEW Old Master doing food still-lifes for our time. And that's me. I don't yet have it cleared with my London-based fine art representative — Pierre St. Claude-Roubalais (of Pierre St. Claude-Roubalais Fine Art) — to share images of my work with y'all.
I am permitted to share at least the names of a few of my paintings, which are guaranteed to stimulate your aesthetic curiosity and certainly whet the appetite:
∎ Still Life with Fritos, Nacho Cheese Sauce and Various Packaged Meat Snacks
∎ Still Life with KFC Family-Style Bucket and Pear
∎ Still Life with Scoops of Twenty-Nine of Thirty-One Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream Flavors Because Cookie Monster Includes Colors Not Available in My Starter Kit and Lemon Sherbet Looks Like Antoine Vollen Spilled a Large Vat of Yellow Paint
∎ Still Life with Cry-Rubbed Ribs, Pulled Pork, Collard Greens and Two Pears
∎ Still Life with Family Dogs Eating Biscuits and Gravy That Were Supposed to be for Breakfast
