Mexican Cutie & Barefoot Charter

February 2, 2011

Quite nippy out this morning (high teens), which reminds me of one of the plein air painters I met last weekend in Corsicana, Texas. Greg McHuron has to be one of the hardest working painters in the land. By his own account, he works 71-98 hours a week, painting mostly outdoors, on location. He adds, "I'll paint to 20 below." When I asked him if he has painted below that frigid degree, he said, yes, he has painted at 40 below, but below 20, all the moisture in the air goes away and the resulting shadows "are too cold to hang on the wall." By that, I think he means it looks too forboding, not comfortable, or appealing. And, by the way, Greg is a "barefoot charter captain" as well, which has something to do with fishing boats and crew size, I think.

Meanwhile, whipped out a study of a Mexican Cutie this morning before I went into work:

The portrait I poached from an old Cisco Kid movie from the 1940s and the background I got from a series of patina boards I have been doing. Sometimes I'll start 10 or 15 of these and push wet paint around and let it dry. This morning, I grabbed this one and quickly added the portrait. I especially like this old-photo-style-patina.

An English writer, wrote a travel piece about visiting the White Stallion Guest Ranch near Marana, Arizona and in the article she described reading a "fantastically eclectic" magazine called True West which was in her room. Loved that description of our publication. We are going to use it in an ad campaign.

And speaking of ad campaigns we are debating a couple slogans in the office. Sheri Riley and Allison Cabral came up with the slogan, "We make history cool." I rather like this, and think it's true. Others, Ken Amorosano mainly, think "cool" ain't cool enough. Someone suggested "We get history right," but that seems rather pedestrian. What are your thoughts?

"Ordinary histories estrange us from the past, but works of fine are can bring us near it."
—Old Vaquero Saying