Redtree Times

Railbirds, 1994

One thing I have learned in my painful career as a gambler is that bragging when you get lucky and win a few games will plunge you into gloom and unacceptable beatings very soon. It happens every time.

–Hunter S. Thompson, Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness (1904)

On Friday, I proposed running a post every week that looked back at my earliest efforts, the work that never made it out of the studio but were vital to my artistic development. This is the first official post of the A Look Back series and it features a favorite older piece that I have featured in two prior posts in 2009 and 2015. I have merged those posts below, added the very appropriate Hunter S. Thompson quote above (his Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was a favorite book around the time in my life this painting depicts) and an equally appropriate song at the bottom from Sister O.M Terrell, The Gambling Man.

FYI: Sister O.M. Terrell was born in 1911 and died at the age of 95 in 2006. She had a short-lived recording contract in the early 1950’s but was primarily a Southern street corner guitar preacher, part of what is known as the Holiness Movement that eschewed the formality of traditional Baptist and Methodist churches, instead going out onto the streets and making joyful noise with their street gospel music.

Here’s the mashup of those earlier posts:

This is an older painting of mine from back in 1994. I was in the transition from trying to simply replicate the work of others to developing my own visual voice. I wasn’t sure where it would go from there and didn’t even have an idea of how to proceed. I just painted and painted, letting each piece be the guide for the next. Sometimes it brought forth breakthroughs and sometimes not. But this time and this work still brings back that excitement of the unknown that was so present in that time.

This little piece is a favorite of mine from that time and is painted in a more traditional watercolor style that I was dabbling in at the time. It is titled Railbirds and depicts a scuffle between the inhabitants at the rail of a horse track. Perhaps there was a dispute over a mislaid wager, a mumbled insult, or which jockey looked sharpest in their colors. Who knows?

The culture of gambling played a major part in my youth. I spent an inordinate amount of time at racetracks and taverns as a kid, reading the Daily Racing Form and drinking watery Cokes. There are a lot of stories and details I could add that might make this a personal mythology piece but I think in this instance, the less said the better.

One summer, my father and I were at the track on average 3-4 times a week. We would make the hour and a half drive, often stopping in at one of the taverns on the way to the track so he could knock back a beer and study the Racing Form while I played whatever game was at that tavern, usually an electric bowling machine. I can’t remember the name of those machines. It was a strange time, one where a 13-year-old kid could lay wagers, sometimes for hundreds of dollars, at the betting windows without any questions. I would often act as a runner of the wagers for my dad and uncles my dad. And my own.

I was, and still am, surprised that summer at how many of the same people were there every day, sitting in the same section of the grandstand as we were. To the point that we were on a first name basis with some.

That time was a great experience in watching people and how they click and interact with one another. It was a virtual laboratory and showcase for human behavior.

I was exposed to a world where adults were often at their worst.

Drunk. Angry. Greedy.

I learned a lot of lessons there besides the fact I was a lousy gambler. It stirred in me the beginnings of a realization that I didn’t want to spend my life in that way. I saw lives that were heavily addicted to gambling and alcohol and it seemed like such a waste of time in what even then seemed like a too brief lifespan.

There had to be a better life than this. Of course, I had no idea what that better life might be or how to get to it.

That took some time. A lot of time and many of what I have come to refer as beatdowns, breakdowns, and meltdowns.

Maybe these lessons and the behavior of many of these people formed the darkness that I use as a base for my work. I often think it is the contrast between the underlying darkness and the overriding light of my work that sometimes makes it effective, makes it feel hopeful without being naive or Pollyannaish.

I don’t know for sure. But I do look at this piece quite often in the studio, studying its rhythm and flow while thinking of those times and the lessons learned. As I’ve pointed out before, you can’t appreciate the good without knowing the bad -or the light without having been in the dark.