“What am I doing sitting on a pile of trash
in an empty city lot behind Fourth Street?”
It was 9 AM on a Thursday morning in the mid
1970s. I should have been attending Medical Grand Rounds, a presentation by the
medical residents of interesting cases to the house staff and attending
physicians. It was a weekly ritual that I had attended faithfully for the past
6 years.
So why was I sitting on a stack of empty
mattresses in the middle of an empty lot? I was drawing the back of a row of
dilapidated houses, fascinated by the texture and gritty nature of the composition
they created, totally unaware that this would mark the beginning of a 5 year
process to reveal an artist tucked away somewhere within me. To say it was pure
pleasure would be less than true. Guilt and insecurity were right beside me, asking
me “what are you doing out here? You should be at Grand Rounds. It’s ridiculous
to think that you’re an artist, or could become one. All you can do is draw
small sketches with a Parker fountain pen. Hell, you can’t even paint!” There
was no shortage of guilt, doubt and self-recrimination, but not enough to pull
me away. Art – pencil and pen and ink drawing – was becoming more than a casual
hobby; it was something I felt driven to do. It’s not like I was bored and
looking around for something to keep me occupied. This interest in drawing
simply crept into my consciousness without any forethought, and once it was
established proceeded to grow until it became more of a need than an option or
choice. This wasn’t the first time I experienced something like this. In the
spring of my first year in college, without my conscious input I suddenly
decided I wanted to be a physician and not a pharmacist. Ironically, I was now
engaged in a process that, albeit much slower, would take me from medicine to
art. But that’s another story. I would end up painting and drawing the backs of
buildings throughout my years in Wilmington, and over 25 years later would do
the same in Paducah.
The backs of so many
urban buildings often stand in stark contrast to their fronts, and are
frequently far more interesting because of the nitty gritty texture and
disarray. In 1984 the Wilmington News Journal moved their headquarters from
downtown Wilmington to a new suburban industrial park, and asked me to do a
painting of the old headquarters for a poster to give their friends and
employees. Of course I did the back, which was far more interesting to me that
the boring façade in front. They loved it, bought it, and then asked be to do
the front for the poster. Here are the two paintings – you can decide for
yourself.
I originally considered calling this post – By Their Backsides You Will Know Them. But then I
wasn’t sure how people would interpret that.
