It rains a lot on Vancouver Island.

Guests will often come and go and never catch a glimpse of the fabled edifice, so Rick painted it for them to hang beside the big window. At least this way when they’re socked in, it helps people see what they’re missing.

Come to think of it, that’s what artists do for the rest of us. They help us see what we’re missing.

See that teeny splooge of red at the base of the evergreen on the right? That’s how much I know about the process of painting, just so we’re all clear.

However, I am becoming quite the expert at the process of watching Rick paint.

Painting appears to be a strenuous exercise in problem solving, involving both seeing things as they really are and knowing how to trick the eye into seeing what we think should be there.

Until I started watching Rick paint, I hadn’t realized that I have only been processing my visual world as it makes sense to me, and this is not anywhere close to the same thing as seeing what’s really there.

My favorite part is the guessing game I play with myself as I watch him paint.

(Well, that and the way his shoulder muscles flex. I think I may have mentioned before this makes me want to bite him. But he’s painting and also has a strange aversion to being bitten, so I refrain. Noble of me, don’t you think?)

He’ll stare at the painting for a bit, then squirt out a splotch of the most unlikely color onto his palette, and smoosh it around with a little of this and a dab of that. As he lifts the brush up, I almost always think, “Now, where the heck are you going with that, Mister?! There’s no crying in baseball, and there’s no electric blue in a landscape!”

Doink.

And all of a sudden, there’s a new freshness or relief or believability or something that hadn’t been there the moment before.

A dribble of honeydew green grows into the top of a tree. A big bold swipe of shark blue… I see the contour of a hill.

And now I think I’m starting to understand how this seeing/tricking thing is done.

It’s magic.

1. He loves to thumb through old copies of the magazine, “Cowboys and Indians.”
2. He’s fascinated by semiotics, which is the study about how people communicate through signs and images. For example, how do we all know that red means “hot” and blue means “cold”?
3. Rick is an artist, and last Saturday he woke up with an idea for a new direction to take his painting

Why not take the incredibly icon-rich imagery from the imagination of The Wild West and riff on that some?

Western themes are enduring and easily recognizable. And if judged by the amount of silver and turquoise jewelry, phoenix-embroidered denim clothing, embossed-leather cowboy boots, wrought-iron key hooks, and other items for sale throughout the magazine, folk seem to like looking at and living with it.

The first idea that came out of the chute? A cowboy and bucking bronco, of course.

In truth, he’d planned to include a series of ranch brands in the bottom left corner of the painting, but by the time he’d landed on the night-blue background with the hint of good red dirt at the bottom, the painting went a different direction.

Against the dark background, the funky iridescent paint he started the horse and rider in crept a little too close to the “Elvis on black velvet” gestalt. In the manner of all great painters everywhere, he responded by picking up The Big Brush, wet it in dark blue, and in a couple of swishes and flicks, nuked the cowboy.

Except that this cowboy was not riding gently off into any stinkin’ sunset, thank you very much. The iridescence was still partially visible in what now looked like a beautiful night sky. So why not leave his essence there and play “connect the dots” the way constellation identifiers do? (How anyone came up with “Orion, The Hunter” out of a grouping of stars that is so clearly a lobster still baffles me.)

We thought a little fun in Photoshop might help compensate for what a computer screen steals from the texture and subtlety of the real painting in good light.

Changing horses in mid-stream is, as far as I can tell, one of the most fun parts of painting. That’s why, for now, we’re calling it “Pumpernickel.”

The idea comes from my habit of re-casting everything I attempt through the lens of what I achieve: if I bake a loaf of bread and it turns out to be a better door-stop than toast, I just slice it thin and call it “pumpernickel.”  Retro-fitting reality is a handy way to become immensely more successful with very little effort.

It also seemed like a good name for a horse, or a constellation, or this painting.

Pumpernickel is now signed, and Rick is moving on with his idea.

He tells me this one will be “Big Thunder,” unless something better comes along. What would you call it?

Both know the key element of their success is surprise.  (Well, that and the propensity to get booed right out of the theater if their timing stinks, except the general isn’t likely to mutter, “Just shoot me now!” on the way out.)

Humor and war both depend on successfully smacking the other guy upside the head with the unexpected.

A painting isn’t like that.

I’ve only seen two paintings that have made me laugh out loud. One was in a chi-chi gallery in San Francisco. It was of the dumbest-looking abstract sheep in a huge field of flat green. The sheep made me smile, but what made me laugh was the price tag.  How could they ask the equivalent of a timeshare in Maui for a dumb sheep painting? Some things are hard to understand, like war and humor and the pricing of art.

But I digress.

The other painting that made me laugh out loud was this one, and I saw it for the first time this week.

The reason why it made me howl when Rick took it out of the box in the garage isn’t because it’s got a surprise twist or an unexpected punchline. It’s because it’s so ordinary. Nobody paints ordinary people.  Okay, so maybe it is a little unexpected.

Been to a beach lately?

They really aren’t heavily populated with the gorgeous air-brushed young bodies of the timeshare brochures, tanned and toned and disdainful of shapewear.

They are generally populated with persons of an average weight, attractiveness, age, and a desperate need for shapewear.

There are curious seagulls, sand that sneaks into places that will shock you in the tub that night, and relentless blue skies.

There are beach towels, and butts that retain the webbing indentations of lawn chairs when they stand up and waddle over to the snack shack for another soda. And there are sagging lily-white boobs just begging for a third-degree sunburn.

And for some reason, when an artist has the courage to paint ‘em the way he sees ‘em, it makes me laugh.

Once upon a time there was a young artist whose talent was evident from even the earliest days at the finger painting station in kindergarten. It was really something to watch those fat little fingers flying from the blue tempura powder bucket to the red to the yellow. Grand sweeping arcs of color were followed by inspired flicks from three feet back, just to see what would happen.

This wasn’t Rick.

It was me, and Mrs. Vardy did not appreciate me flinging paint at Eric, The Nose Picker. I know you’re all with me on this one: he had it coming. However, I lost my case.

Banished from the paint station, my progress in watercolor was tragically cut short. Some say it’s probably for the best, that I had peaked early and would have only experienced frustration and artistic despondence in my future. Thus, I remain ridiculously happy with absolutely no talent for painting whatsoever.

Rick, on the other hand…

I love to watch him at the easel. He’ll stop dead still, like a German short-haired pointer fixated on a grouse, peering into the canvas. Then something clicks. He’ll whip his brush into the palette and pick up an oily glob of brilliant periwinkle and head back in. Meanwhile, I’m thinking, “Periwinkle? Are you kidding? Where’s that going to fit?”

One poke, a swish and a couple of smudgettes later, and one whole corner of the painting now reads like you’re standing in the middle of the most spectacular vineyard you’ve never seen, watching a gathering storm that’s gonna make you run like stink once the rain starts.

Plus, his back muscles flex in a way that makes me want to bite his beautiful arms.