Drawing, Profile Portrait of Leadbelly

A few years ago I came across a dog dictionary at a tag sale. I bought the book and took it to my studio where I proceeded to draw several of the dogs in the book. Of several hundred images I did a dozen dogs. Later I went to the library and got images of a dozen famous men to juxtapose with the dogs. I called the series “Dogs and Men”, all of those images but three are sold now but I still have a bull terrier, and the image that went with it, the musician, “Leadbelly”.

This image is drawn from a mug shot taken at a time in his life when he had been arrested for murder. I am very fond of this drawing, especially the way it captures his pensive but proud look.

Drawing, A broker Waving Goodby with his Hat

If you saw the drawing I posted yesterday, then you know that the stockbroker lost his hat on Wall street, and a homeless man went off with it. But in this drawing you can see that the stockbroker has his hat back and is waving goodbye to someone with it. This is what happened, the homeless man sold this hat back to the stockbroker for 100 dollars. In this drawing you can see that the hat is up in the air and there are buildings down under the hat. This is completely correct because if you go outside and hold a hat up in the air, your hat and your hand will be “in” the sky, and everything else will be underneath it.

And if you ask me, “Richard why is the hat lit from the left, and the building lit from the right? I would answer that the buildings were drawn at the bottom of the paper four years ago, and the hat about fifteen minutes ago. Furthermore the buildings were drawn in the morning and the hat was drawn in the afternoon.

Drawing, A Day in the Life of Six Hats

This is actually six drawings. They are all the same size and materials. Whomever buys these drawings is going to need to know the following information.

HAT 1: This is a party hat. It was purchased yesterday for the birthday of the man who is asleep there in bed, you can see his foot in the drawing down on the bottom right. This is no ordinary party hat, it is made entirely of expensive cloth carefully hand stitched together. The man whose hat this is, when he gets up later will have to decide what to do with the hat. He can’t just throw it away. Years from now it will be a prized possession of his children who will use it in all their games.

HAT 2: This is a brand new military hat just out of the box. You can see the box there at the bottom of the drawing. Those big military hat boxes are excellent for keeping all of your important papers and documents in.

HAT 3: This is a very expensive hat belonging to a wealthy stock broker in New York. This hat blew off of his head this morning and landed there in the gutter. Incidentally, you can see clearly that it is New York because the curb has the quarter round of shiny steel at the edge that you see on New York curbing. Well, even though the hat cost in excess of $100 dollars, the man did not run to fetch it back. Good thing he didn’t to because the moment he got to the office he concluded a stock deal for a quarter of a million dollars, which would have fallen through had he been two seconds late. As for the hat, a homeless man has it , and although it gets him big laughs, his manor is changing and he seems more thoughtful now.

HAT 4: This is a band leaders parade hat which only gets used once a year. It spends the rest of the time in a locker in a high school hallway in upstate New York.

HAT 5: This hat belongs to a very beautiful young woman going to Vassar college. She is going to wear it today with that top that you can see there in the dresser drawer. Let me tell you what kind of a woman she is. Every day, in the afternoon, she draws a little sketch of what she is going to wear the next day in the borders of her school notebook. These little sketches are so good that you would think she would be studying fashion design, but she is studying physics.

HAT 6 This looks like a baseball cap but its long brim makes it a hunting cap. It was purchased by a man from a mail order catalog. He didn’t like it but the very day he got it and planned to return it, it got rained on and shrank terribly. Now he can’t return it, but it doesn’t matter because the dog is about to eat it. You can see in the drawing that the hat has been dragged down next to the dog’s food bowl. By the time you get to read this that hat will have ceased to exist.

Drawing, Roses by the Side of the Bed

Here are complete directions for doing a drawing of this type. Take a nice heavy weight piece of drawing paper and soak it in water till it expands, then, before it starts to dry out staple it around the edges to a piece of wood. Once it is dry give it a good two or three coats of gesso, and while the last coat is drying go for a walk in the woods and look for tin cans that are all rusted. Do not neglect this step or you won’t be able to put in the high-lights later when you are finishing the drawing. When you get back from the woods take the rusty tin cans, put them in a canvas bag and beat it with a hammer. Open the bag, throw away the cans, but save all the little rusty bits of metal that are in the bag like dust. Sprinkle the rusty metal bits on to the paper, which should be dry by now. Take a heavy metal roller, (a rolling pin will do however) and press these metal chips into the paper so they get embossed into the paper surface. After that brush the dust off the paper and throw it away, and rub the paper surface with a rag. The excess rust will color the paper a beautiful golden yellow color, just like pastel does.

Now it is time to draw, take a red or maroon wax pencil that goes well with the yellow of the paper, try and think of some good idea, and when you have one draw it onto the paper as good as you can. When you are done with that it is time to put in the highlights. Take a razor blade and where ever you want highlights scratch through the yellow iron oxide tint of the paper down to the white gesso underneath. This will give you the most wonderful precise little highlights, but don’t over do it, too many highlights ruin many a drawing.
And what is this drawing about, after all that? Is it about lost love like yesterday’s drawing? Is it about romance? Or is it about interior decoration? I can’t say right now maybe we’ll talk about it tomorrow.

Venice

Venice, it was ten long years since I had seen her last. How was I to know on that fateful day, ten years ago, that when we stepped onto the plane to go home, my life had changed, in every detail, from a major to a long minor chord, without explanation; forever and without resolution.

And now finally, I had returned alone—late at night so I was unable to see those familiar sights. I took the same room, with the same view and in the morning, very early, I opened the shutters and looked out upon the city. How am I to explain that strange sensation? A sensation of a type only experienced at best, two, perhaps three times in one lifetime.

It was that feeling of returning to yourself after a very long absence. That moment when you begin to do something extremely ordinary, characteristic of your own personality but practically forgotten during that long stretch of time during which you struggled to be someone else, for someone else.

You look at your duplicitous self, you want to apologize, but then you say, "It’s all right, I’ve forgiven you already, let’s just go out and get a cup of coffee, you and I, my friend.”

Richard Britell Housatonic, 2008

Drawing, Best Coffee I Ever Drank

This is a drawing of the corner store in the town of Housatonic on Route 183 in Western Massachusetts where I live. But nothing is as simple as all that, and I have to be more specific. It is a drawing of that corner store in the fading light of early evening, in the rain. The view is from inside a car, so the image is further obscured, and made more painterly, by the water on the windshield that has merged and blended all the forms together. The diagonal strokes at the bottom left and right are the marks of the windshield wipers going back and forth. This drawing has a very long title which I include here since it wouldn’t fit in the title box:
Full Title:
I was standing early in the morning with our rednecks in the village store having coffee. As usual they eyed me suspiciously and one of them said, apropos of nothing, “This is the best country.” I couldn’t but agree and addressing them all I said with conviction, “This is the best country. And this is the best state in this country. This is the best town in this state. With out a doubt this is the best and only store in this town. And this is the best coffee I ever drank!”

Drawing, Nude Combing her Hair and Petting the Cat

This nude figure is sitting on the bed, combing her hair and petting the cat with her foot. You may want to ask me why I decided to put an electric plug and a wire in my drawing. Was I because I wanted it to symbolize the power and life of the figure? No. Was it because I got my figure too far over to the right, and I needed something to balance the composition? No. It was because I wanted to be absolutely sure that in the future no one would attempt to pass my drawing off as an old master drawing done in the Renaissance. That is why I put the plug in the drawing. To make sure that it is a “modern” drawing.

This concern with being modern for me goes back to my student days when I was in art school. I had several old master drawings up on my wall and my mother, coming to visit, started looking at a Leonardo drawing and asked me, “When did you do this one, Dicky?” This question I dismissed at the time as coming from someone who knew nothing of art history. But it was impossible to dismiss it completely. My work was anachronistic. And it is still a factor in my drawing. Does my figure’s right arm look suspiciously like the right arm of Michelangelo’s Libyan Sibyl? Sticking in a Tide box is not going to solve this problem.

The City, Cat Crossing the Street

This drawing is about a cat that is crossing the street at an intersection. Actually he appears to be stopped and just standing there undecided what to do, or where to go, like cats often do. That is what I think it is about. Someone else might say it is about the man in the second story window on the left that is reading the stock report in the paper. Someone else might say it is about the woman with a child on the right, getting ready to cross the road.

If you do a drawing of an entire city, then the drawing is about the city. If you insert the image of one person into the drawing of the city, then the drawing is about that person and the city becomes the backdrop. And if you draw a city, with figures in it, and then you put in a cat, then the drawing is about the cat. That’s what I think, and I’m sure that the cat agrees!

This drawing measures 11” x 7.5”. It was created using maroon crayon pencil , on a heavy cold press watercolor paper. The paper in this drawing was painted yellow before the drawing was started, and after the paint was dry the surface had a lot of paint chips pressed into it with a heavy roller. This can’t be seen in the scan and is hard to explain with words, but the paper of this drawing has a complex embossed surface while can only be seen close up, this texture gives the drawn line a nice lively unpredictability. It is signed on the lower right, witha B.

Drawing, A Kind of Anguish

A drawing comprised of a series of unrelated objects more or less floating in space one above the other. This drawing had its origin about a month ago when I was reading the eBay rules and regulations and came across the novel idea that a title should not contain any “spam”. A spam title was a completely new concept for me and I got to thinking about what kind of drawing could have a title which would be a spam title. Perhaps a drawing that is just essentially a list of things someone might want to buy. So I started thinking about doing a drawing of a series of unrelated objects, but when one tries to create a series of unrelated things, the unconscious takes over and they all become related on a different plane. So my idea about spam disappears, the drawing becomes a remembrance of lost love and parting, the objects reflect “A Kind Of Anguish” instead.

This drawing was done outside, under a tree at Williams College at about !:00 P.M. on May 10 with an hb pencil on cream color paper. It measures 11.25” x 7.25”.

Four Musicians Walking on a Yellow Ground

Here we have four musicians walking along the road and playing their instruments. The first on the left with the cymbals is a woman and appears to be the leader. The three men, the violinist, trumpeter, and drummer seem to be showing off in an attempt to get the woman's attention. It is hard to tell though in this drawing, we can’t ask them, and I did the drawing and I don’t know.

But that is not entirely true. The drawing is actually an image describing an event in my life that occurred seventeen years ago. Not as a metaphor, but sort of as an actual fact. But what that event was, and its significance, I don’t want to talk about in public like this.

Walking Around the Upper East Side

My old High School was in a run down neighborhood through which I would walk everyday on the way to school. In one of the innumerable blocks of a neighborhood called, “The Cornhill,” lived an old woman, who had apparently lost her mind. She lived in a little house by herself. It was one of those city houses in which the porch comes right down onto the sidewalk. Her madness, which was quite obvious, expressed itself in an obsession with cleanliness. She was constantly sweeping the sidewalk in front of her house. When she wasn’t sweeping the sidewalk, she would sit by her window keeping a malevolent eye on the street, and if anyone were to dare to walk upon her sidewalk she would rush outside shouting a stream of abuse at the unsuspecting person, and then promptly sweep clean the sidewalk again. I say “unsuspecting” because anyone who knew of the old woman and her obsession stayed clear of her patch of sidewalk.

Not always however, we had our incorrigible hoodlums and troublemakers who would go and deliberately stand on her sidewalk and even flick ashes from their cigarettes onto the pavement. When something like this would happen she would immediately call the police. Then she would stand on her porch, shaking with rage, but saying nothing, waiting for the police to arrive. The police always treated her with the utmost courtesy, and the boys would shuffle away a minute or so before they arrived so as not to have to speak with them. No one actually disliked this old woman. She wasn’t “the crazy old lady.” She was, “Our crazy old lady.”

That neighborhood is very much changed now. The High School was boarded up fifteen years ago, and a great many houses are boarded up also, or they are for sale by the city. Nevertheless whenever I go back home I wander around those streets without fail. The last time I was there was in June. I passed the crazy woman’s house. I walked on her sidewalk. It is very easy to understand, I think, that nothing would have given me more pleasure than to have her rush outside again and admonish me for walking on her sidewalk. I don’t exactly understand why this is so.

There aren’t too many neighborhoods however that I feel that proprietary attachment to. A feeling that any change there concerns you personally. One such neighborhood is the Upper East side, from 79th street to about 98th Street. At one time I was represented by a gallery on 79th street and for about six years I would make day trips to the city to bring the gallery my paintings. Once I made my delivery I had a few hours to spend before going back home, so I would wander around the Upper East Side. In time I felt that I was “my “ neighborhood. If a fashionable clothing shop were to close and be replaced by a fashionable cheese shop I felt personally affronted. If the St. Nicholas Cathedral were to have it’s domes gilded I would think it a mistake, and prefer the old copper patina. This sense of attachment extends right down to the pavement and it’s cracks, but I don’t know why that is.

In this drawing from the top left:

1. The Guggenheim
2. Red slate roof on a town house, directly across the street from the entrance to the Met.
3. Faces on chimneys on the opposite corner from the Guggenheim
4. East 94th Street from No. 7 - 17
5. The Old Armory
6. Onion domes of St. Nickolas’ Cathedral on East 96th Street
7. An ornamental urn on top of a pedestal on Fifth Avenue
8. The corner of East 92th Street
9. View from the window of Yura and Company Coffee Shop at East 92 and Madison

Soup and Crackers

Since when is a copy more important than an origional? A drawing of a flower better than a flower? A portrait better than a lovely face? A Warhol painting better than a bowl of soup?

If we come to that in the end, we will all exchange our Warhols for a bowl of soup, or for that matter, even just the crackers.

276 Cups of Coffee, Or My Trip to Rome

A few years ago I made a trip to Rome and from the day I got there until the day I left, the most important experiences I had, consisted of sitting at little tables in the street and drinking coffee from tiny little cups. All the great art and historical monuments could not rival the coffee-drinking aspect of the trip. I’m sure that you know what I mean if you have ever been there, or Paris or London for that matter.

This drawing is like a sketch-book journal of all the really great coffee I drank in Rome that I can remember. But don’t think that I was indifferent to the great art and architecture. In the last rectangle of my drawing you can see part of a building; it is one of those buildings that have statues on the roof. If you look, you can see the legs and feet of one of those statues. What is even more fascinating than those buildings with their statues however, are the great flocks of birds that circle overhead as the sun is setting, for about an hour every evening. They are drawn into that last square also.

Alexander the Great in India

I wanted this painting to symbolize an event in the life of Alexander the Great. The story goes like this: when Alexander had finally marched his armies into the far reaches of India he met there a holy man sitting under a tree. Through one of his interpreters he started a philosophical discussion with the holy man during which he explained that he was the ruler of all of the countries from India back to Macedonia. The holy man replied, "The question is whether you can consider that you even rule the land on which you are standing." If he didn’t say that, then he said, "Please move over as you are blocking out my sunlight."

The tic-tac-toe game therefore represents the conversation between the holy man and Alexander in which the holy man wins because he says the wittiest remark. But he also wins because he gets to go first, and the first one to move in tic-tac-toe usually wins. The fact that the holy man goes first is meant to signify that Indian religious and philosophical thought is much older than Greco-Roman thinking and therefore could be said to have "gone first." But now, some observant critic of my painting might object, and say, "Just because a person goes first in tic-tac-toe does not mean necessarily that they win. And, if the game was played against Alexander the Great, the great military tactician, how could it happen then, that he would lose the game rather than tie it?"

That question had me baffled for a very long time--so perplexed that I almost had to gesso out the canvas and start over. But then I realized that the painting is a work of art, and a metaphor, and therefore does not need to conform to the strict requirements of historical writing. And as a matter of fact there is a prerequisite for the "artistic defeat" of Alexander. In Handel’s Oratorio, "Alexander's Feast," the lyrics call for Alexander to be moved to tears by the sight of his dead opponent Darius as he lies in the dust. The lyrics, singing of Darius say, "Without a friend, without a friend to close his eyes. And describing Alexander, they say, "And tears began to flow." So, if Handel can make Alexander weep over his enemy Darius, why can’t I have my Alexander let the holy man win at tic-tac-toe, as he might think, "Oh, what’s the harm, I’ve defeated them all in battle why not let them win at a little game like this."

But all of the above is pointless because I spent the day at the library trying to find that story of Alexander, and apparently it only exists in my head, as I was unable to find even the least mention of it. And even if I had found it, who’s to say that some scholar might not come along years from now and completely debunk that story, which scholars just love to do in order to make a name for themselves in academic circles. And a fine fix that would put my painting in, stripped of its very reason and explanation for its existence, hanging on a wall, just a measly tic-tac-toe game of no consequence to anyone!

With that in mind I felt that this painting should have an alternative meaning, just like a spare tire in case of a blow out. The spare meaning is that the tic-tac-toe game symbolizes five kisses, and four hugs. And I doubt if any scholar either now or in the future could ever debunk that symbol. And so if you owned this painting you could send it to a friend, and you could write a note that would begin, "When you first look at this painting I know that you will think of Alexander the Great, that time when he was in India, but it isn’t about that, not at all, this painting is about you and I that time when...”

Richard Britell 2007

You Slept With Her Didn't You

I am at my wit's end. When I returned to Paris, I went down to the Seine in the evening as I usually do to have a little chat with "Notre Dame Cathedral," but she refuses to speak with me—not a single word. At first I could not imagine what was bothering her, but after a few days I realized what the problem is. She is jealous; that's right, she thinks that I have fallen in love with some buildings in New York, and that I don't care about her anymore. Finally, last evening I got it out of her.
She asked, "Why do you only come to see me in the evening?"
I told her that I like the evening because in the evening light all of her forms merge together in a harmonious whole.
"Oh," she said petulantly, "So in the day time I'm ugly, is that it?"
She thinks I'm in love with the Chrysler Building, or some such thing and that I prefer "neo" architecture now, to the gothic. She says, "I know I'm gothic, I know that I am covered over with sculpture that is all out of proportion, but that didn't bother Victor Hugo, and believe me, he was a much better lover than you could ever be. Besides, the Chrysler Building may be young and easy to look at all at once, but my architecture is based on much more complex ideas."
I can't go on like this; I don't know what to do. It would be one thing if I really was in love with the Chrysler Building; its huge simple arches are so restful.
As a matter of fact, I was visiting a friend in New York recently, whose office window faces the Chrysler building, and while waiting for him and looking at the top of that building for a long time, I finally fell asleep in a chair by the window.
But last night when I was trying to explain my feelings about the Chrysler Building to "Notra Dame" she suddenly shouted,
"You slept with her, didn't you!"