A Painting of a Sign Painter, by a Sign Painter
I didn’t plan to write about my dad, just a few weeks after posting a piece about what would have been my parents’ 72nd wedding anniversary. But I can’t get that painting out of my mind. Perhaps writing about it will help. Besides, Father’s Day is coming up. I have been a dad for nearly 47 years. The verdict is likely still out on my fathering qualities.
Some of you have read this before, but others haven’t. I’ll make it brief. My dad drew a paycheck as a commercial artist, a fancy term for a sign painter. A botched medical procedure when he was 58 left him disabled and unable to work. Before that, he was the best sign painter in East Texas, a man with a steady hand and keen eye. He painted freehand on glass doors, restaurant menu signs, hundreds of safety/precaution signs at Eastman Chemical, and the trailer for Scout Troop 201, which is still going strong at 105 years.
That’s the troop his three sons joined, I first as the oldest. We had no choice. Our paternal grandfather was the area Boy Scout executive and said when we arrived from New Hampshire in June 1968, “Y’all are going to be in Troop 201.” Wise choice, and that trailer was still behind the now-restored log cabin at Teague Park in Longview, last time I looked.
I digress.
As much as my dad loved painting signs, billboards, or silk-screening T-shirts, he aspired to be a fine artist. He used nearly all two-dimensional mediums: pen-and-ink, charcoal, oil painting, acrylic paints, and colored pencils. He worked at his art incessantly, coming home from Eastman at 5, eating supper with us, then retiring to his drawing board in the converted carport nearly every night at least for a few hours. I fondly remember peering at my dad through the windowed door leading into his studio. He sat hunched over that drawing table with a single light shining down, country music playing on his cheap transistor radio.
My dad’s music tastes around the time I left home had gone from Eddy Arnold (you’ll have to Google him) to Willie Nelson. He loved Willie and made an excellent pencil portrait of the Red-Headed Stranger, of which he made prints in the 1980s. (If anyone would like a print, I’ll send you one for free. Just pay it forward in some manner.)
He loved cowboys and Indians, and drew and painted both, usually from photographs he found in magazines. And horses. My dad loved painting and drawing horses. He was also a fine portraitist of two-legged creatures as well. One of my favorite pieces is of an elderly Black preacher, Bible in hand, about to sermonize. It hangs in the bedroom.
He never gained fame, except among his friends and family. He was a kind man, nearly all the time, but erupted every great once in a while. I guess I inherited that from him as well. Like me, he spent a lot of time living inside his head. He never quit trying to break through with his artwork, dreaming someday of being able to quit that day job at which he excelled. If he had not been brain-damaged by radiation to shrink a non-cancerous tumor, maybe he would have found at least minor fame in his sixties. Who knows?
But he is remembered by East Texas folks of a certain age. He sold prints at Alley Fest, held in downtown Longview for a few decades. Together, we created a sesquicentennial print in 1986 (I paid to print it, and we split the sales). I still have prints of those as well, if anyone is interested. That he is still remembered came home a few months ago, when I got a Facebook message from the daughter of a family that lived across the street from us on South Twelfth Street. They had moved out of South Longview decades ago. The mom died, and the daughter was preparing for an estate sale. Been there, done that. It is hard.
The message read: Hey Gary, this is _______. We lived across the street from each other on Twelfth Street. I have a picture that your Dad painted and was wondering if you wanted it.
I had no idea what painting she was referring to but quickly said yes. It took a while to connect, but eventually we met at her late mom’s home. The painting is one I don’t recall ever seeing, but that could just be my lousy memory.
The painting depicts a sign painter on a piece of lumber balanced on two sawhorses, on the side of a country store. He is about halfway through painting a sign: Andy’s General Mercantile. Two 1930s-era gas pumps are out front in the red-clay parking lot. It is a painting of a sign painter created by a sign painter. This is my favorite painting of my prolific, quiet, work-driven, and generally kind dad. Getting this painting felt like a Father’s Day present.
I am grateful to my former neighbor for both the painting and the memories it has evoked. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there.
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