SHOWING WILLARD'S PORTRAIT

caterpillar

Big thunderstorm a while ago lasted a long time, poured the rain, sky banging and rumbling for something like an hour. Caterpillar hid in her most secure hiding place. During a quiet time she came out of her cubbyhole behind the tub. I was sitting, looking at a Harper's magazine. Didn't want to use the computer or the jukebox or watch a movie. Nothing electronic. Caterpillar sat on the local newspaper lying on the floor beside my chair. I picked her up, turned the light out, held her in a cradling way she likes and sang her song to her. Right away she started purring and the eyes were closed. The next round of thunder kept her anxious, but I sang to her in a whispering tone that held her attention better than a loud voice. I held her for quite awhile in the semi-dark until the storm passed. She got up on her feet and jumped to the floor. I think she went to her present sleeping place in a box.



Saw Duke Bledsoe at Selma's coffee shop yesterday. It's always a treat to see Duke. He told me several stories from the past sitting at the bar with a moca before hitting the road to Woodlawn for the show. He kept me entertained for a half hour with rattlesnake experience stories, like the time he and somebody else were out in wilderness somewhere, and the other old boy was petrified of snakes. They came up on a rattlesnake and killed it. Then a couple hundred little ones went squirming about. He said the other fellow went into a stomping fit, Duke too, and thought they got them all. Another time, Duke lifted a rock and a rattlesnake under it coiled up. He let the rock back down without incident. He picked one up in an old-timey hay rake once that was striking at him on the tractor, but couldn't reach him. When he saw what was happening, he loosened the pressure of the hay on the rake and the snake wiggled out and went on its way, most likely with some broken ribs. Or maybe not. Duke is not one to be afraid of snakes. He's respectful, but they don't scare him, that is, past the initial moment of seeing it when a shiver runs up your spine.



Have finished the painting of Willard Gayheart up to a touch here, touch there, and signing it. After I sign it I don't ever touch paint to it again. As it is when it's signed is as it is. I'm happy with it. Of course, when I look at it I tend to see what it is not instead of what it is. I focus on the zones where I had a difficult time and am not completely satisfied with, but I can't get it any closer without making it worse. As with everything in art, there is no finishing it, only abandoning it when it has enough balance to stand on its own. It feels like I reached my goal the best I was able. I set out to make it look like you are looking at Willard, not just facial features, but the essence, the feeling of actually seeing Willard eyeball to eyeball. No matter the details I'm not satisfied with, the most important part I am fully satisfied with. The eyes look like they can see. When I paint eyes, I fuss over them and fuss over them and then it happens, they can see. I don't touch them again.



Painting the face was the same. While I'm filling in the features, the roundness in a cheek, the lines that run up the sides of the nose, the shadow under the chin, the shadow under the lower lip, the glasses where I don't paint the glass but it looks like you're seeing through glass, I am projecting feeling into the shapes, shades and lines to feel like seeing Willard when you know him. I want to paint who his, not just what he looks like. Of course, I can only paint the Willard I know. I paint Willard the musician. I do this to celebrate Willard as an important musician in the music of the Central Blue Ridge. I don't mean important like self-important, but one active in music with 3 superlative bluegrass/old-time bands along the way and several excellent recordings by each of them, Willard playing solid rhythm guitar and singing good old songs like Take Me Back To Tulsa. Yellow Rose of Texas he made his own on the Skeeter and the Skidmarks project. He sang several songs he wrote with Alternate Roots, like Robin D, a river boat in Charleston, West Virginia. Willard's music with his son-in-law Scott Freeman is music that won't be appreciated until off in the future when people will say he was among us and we didn't even notice.



I was taking the painting to Woodlawn to let Willard see it as soon as it was done. I wanted to bring it back home for a week to finish it and sign it and put the hanging wire on the back. I took it into the coffee shop to show it to Selma, propped it on a chair and left it there while I sat at the bar. Duke Bledsoe walked in. I said to Duke, 'I just finished this picture of you.' On sight I saw Willard. Duke has a moustache similar to Willard's, white, and his facial structure is similar, wearing glasses and in a ballcap. He couldn't believe the likeness. He asked how I did it. Did I use a photograph? When did I get a picture of him? It was like a practical joke that didn't work. I had to confess it really was not him, but Willard Gayheart of Woodlawn. He knew Willard's pencil drawings, but didn't know he was a musician. From there we sat at the bar and he entertained me with poisonous snake stories. The joy of the coffee shop is that I never know who I'll see there and it always turns out to be a good time.



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DUKE BLEDSOE OLD PILOT

wassily kandinsky, several circles, 1926 



In town this afternoon, I stopped in at Selma's for a moca. Duke Bledsoe was just inside the door. Duke has been living in Florida for several years. He drives back here a few times a year for real estate deals and other business he keeps going. Duke is one of the county's raconteurs I enjoy talking with. Duke is entertaining when he talks. He's a good story teller and I like to listen to him. I don't mean he tells Jack Tales or anything like that. Duke's stories are memories of something somebody did in the past that was particularly funny or poignant. Duke knows the history of the county. His dad was the Ford dealer on Main St. He grew up in town, son of a Sparta businessman. Starting in his early years he was an adventurer. Adventure is in his blood. Not long out of high school he was in Japan learning judo, knife fighting and other martial arts. He flew crop-dusting planes in the deep South, made good money. He's always flown planes and had one of his own. He's a clever and savvy feller with a fascination for that narrow line between focusing full attention and death. Attention wavers and he's gone. His favorite saying, There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.



Sparta is Duke's base of operations for much that he's been involved in over the years, but at age 83 he's been free for several years from having to make quota income. He brought Karen up here from central Florida in the summers and they went to Florida condo for the winter. About every year they'd take a cruise somewhere. I think they like the dancing and the party atmosphere in the evenings, the social meals around big tables. They like the places the cruises go to, but from knowing them at least a little bit, I suspect they enjoy the carefree atmosphere of everything is taken care of, visiting with people by day, dinner and dancing by night. Vacation from the land of concerns. I was shocked when Duke told me he was 83. He looked maybe like 73. He got around extra good for 83. Got around good for 73. He hand builds airplanes for a hobby and sells them.



Buying and selling is Duke's primary talent. He told me once, years ago, about a learning experience with two men in Independence I knew, the attorney Lorne Campbell and dairy farmer from Volney, Joe Osborne. Lorne and Joe bought and sold real estate together. Joe did the selling Lorne did the legal paperwork. Joe told me that they'd get somebody here from Florida and Joe would take them out and be the one to do the selling. He let them think he was an old hillbilly that didn't know much and they could get a really good deal off of him. He sold them the land at 2 and 3 times its value. Campbell told me there was a time he represented 5 con men in SW Virginia. In the time I knew him, only one of them was still living. He did all the wheelings and dealings in their names with their money. They made and lost bundles of money at a time.



Duke got in with these two fellers when he was young, just getting going at real estate and wheelings and dealings. In these mountains, if you're going to make it by wheelings and dealings, you better be slick. Duke went in with them on some land deals and it worked out they ended up with everything and Duke with nothing. He told me that, I don't recall the details, like he was telling me something about Campbell that would help me see he was a low down scoundrel. But I already knew. I could have told Duke a whole lot more than that Campbell did that he told me about himself, including the story Duke told me about. But I couldn't disrespect Lorne Campbell in death any more than I could in life. Duke sat me down not many months after Campbell died to tell me all the dirty things Lorne Campbell had done in his pirate manner of con operations. I knew all the stories Duke told me, because Lorne had told me, himself, and I knew ones that were a whole lot worse that Duke didn't know about. I had the good fortune that Lorne Campbell chose me to tell his life story to in his last years. It was a full life.



When Duke started his story about Lorne and Joe, this was back around 1990, I saw it coming. Young real estate man wannabe jumped in the deep end with the big dogs and got an expensive for-profit education. Duke is the kind of guy who knows his way about, wherever he is. He bobs back up. He likes buying and selling because it takes some slick thinking. He's liked flying a crop-duster since he was young. I believe he loved the controlled dare-devil aspect of it. Keep your focus and you come through clean. And if you go out, it's clean: Bam--you're dead. It's not a matter of lose your focus and you're dead. It's more like you just don't lose your focus. A moment's loss of focus can snag a power line by not lifting up soon enough. Oops. Hark the herald angels sing. In that way, I see Duke as something of a tightrope walker without a net, somebody with a skill I can't even think about learning. I've always appreciated Duke's quick mind and his open mind. I don't mean to imply he doesn't have his own way of seeing things. Duke is a man of these mountains who is uniquely himself, as is the rule, and makes his way with a quick and retentive mind. I have a great deal of respect for Duke and all he's able to do.



We sat at Selma's coffee shop today for about half an hour, he with a smoothie and me with a moca, talking about whatever came up. I learned he has a Ferrari 4-wheel drive tractor with a Lamborgini engine. Only Duke Bledsoe would find such a thing. I asked where he found it. He said, Italy. Karen is out in Utah this time of year. Has to do with post-cancer maintaining reasonable health. Duke takes care of the place in Florida, comes by Sparta, goes out to Utah. He and Karen recently returned from cruise of Southeast Asia. He told me a great deal about Singapore. She's planning the next cruise. I miss Karen. Last time I saw her was maybe a year ago for half a minute, or even a quarter minute. That's better than not at all. Duke and Karen are very different people, like Republican and Democrat, in so many ways it's everywhere, drawn together and held together by a very real love they have between them. Both Duke and Karen I name among my favorite people.



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