July 30, 2008

Fred Oldfield

Painter of the West

Fred Oldfield woke me up today.
On tv.

Sometimes I drink my coffee with the news.
After 10 minutes, the news repeats.
And repeats.
And repeats!

I wonder what's happening in New Zealand, Vienna or Baja California. Even Emeryville has got to have something going on! Nope, only shootings in Oakland, protests and accidents in San Francisco and of course, horror and hopelessness in the Middle East.

But Fred had good news.
It's easy to paint.
"Just cut a little in here and cut a little out there."
"A little red here, and here, and here, gotta work on it from all directions in."

Thanks, Fred,
I love that thick paint and the brush pushing it around, stroke by stroke.
You made it look easy.
You got that dust-up bronco in action.
You dabbed in the hills.
You mixed paint on canvas and wondered where the brush that you'd needed to do the shadows, oh, there it is, after you had already, deftly added delicate flying reins with the too big brush. Every bit of paint you layed into its place. Red on horse flank, red mixing in to sky.
I'm inspired.

I grabbed that camera and took movies of your lesson.
Not enough, but a start.

And your stories were great.
Ranching as a kid.
Rounding up horses on the Reservation.
Riding Indian ponies weighing only 800 lbs.

Discovering what horses ate in the wild, dry, West.




I watched amazed as you swabbed in some blue and made that horse buck!!

No comments: