C.B. Murphy  .:. Writer

Jack says we’re infected with a Bob Ross pandemic. It started out innocently enough with Robert’s work some months ago. He told me there was a guy who had taught him his style, but I thought we had a true self taught visionary landscape artist on our hands. All his landscapes glowed as if from a hidden light. Then Bart showed up as a inmate-tutor and Robert also got elevated to that spot and there they were: The Bob Rossians, cranking it out. They taught a class in the basics, how to use brushes to make trees and shrubery, but then they all started to look alike. Water in the center of the piece, trees on either side, mountains in the background. Now, it’s spreading around the room, there is no stopping it. Now I know why some people dislike Bob Ross. The virus hidden inside the teaching.

During Character First (the topic: Energy Givers, Energy Wasters) the topic of smelly people came up again. Usually it comes up at least once a session. They were talking about Snake Man, who has some horrific skin disease (worse than Clay’s!) that actually sheds (as in snake). He also hisses like a snake which one might speculate is a natural “embrace the epithet” routine. Being interested in circus freaks, I wanted to know more, but like so many stories it was there one moment, gone the next.

Aside from the Ross Pandemic, people are starting to prepare for the Art Sale in five weeks. Andy, the Californian, doesn’t seem to get it. Not fully. Actually he has some pretty good ideas like painting bulls for the offices of financial people, but everything comes out half-baked, odd and off-putting. He handed me a note with a bunch of 800 numbers on it for places like Smith Barney and asked if I would call “them” and invite “them” to the art show (to buy his bulls). I needed Jack’s intervention to get out of this, which we’re not allowed to do: that is, special favors for people. Jack is also mad at Andy for using too much gesso which is in short supply now. That and using large canvases for his “bulls” plopped down in the center. It’s hard to be so discouraging to a budding entrepreneur. Jack and I figure it might be the anti-psychotic drugs he’s on, seeing as though he tried to kill himself not that long ago and ended up for a long stay in The Hole.

Spent some time with Fairchild talking about zeroing in on tiny parts of a human face (like the nostrils) and how to see them as “alien shapes”, anything other than “nostrils”.  He did some nice ones then drew a straight line for the mouth. Oi vey.

Jacob and Rob were working side by side to copy a Monet of a barn with snow on it. I’m hoping it might be an antidote to the Bob Ross Pandemic, copying the masters.

Spent some time with Fairchild talking about zeroing in on tiny parts of a human face (like the nostrils) and how to see them as “alien shapes”, anything other than “nostrils”.  He did some nice ones then drew a straight line for the mouth. Oi vey.