Painting...

...is for me not a form so much of art as it is a necessity to keep the inner walls of my house from crumbling and being rent asunder. Sure I like a nice van Gogh now and then (he had some way with the brush he did, what with his magnificent way of seeing things), but I have no to little known artistic talent especially when it comes to painting. Yet somehow I must wonder if a guy like van Gogh could see my son's room, maybe he would think otherwise.

I've got two coats of paint on it now, and I figure I should have left it white, but my son wanted red. The white was just something of my fancy, he did not like it, so over it went the red. Sure I know it needs another coat or two, but if van Gogh, or Monet (yes he too did some out of this world painting) got to see it now, with its swirls of fiery red hues on its old plaster walls, if they got to see the angled roller lines, the spilt paint splotched over the old lavender colored carpeting and closet door (yes it used to be my daughter's room), they might find it artistic; or at least they might when the sunlight hits it at just the correct angle. Maybe, by some quirk of the imagination, Vincent would have found my son's room almost as fascinating as was his own when he twice painted it on canvass, once in 1888 and once in 1889 (this one above the 1889 version - strikingly similar but vastly different in subtle ways than the 1888 version).

Alas though, it is a southern exposure, but who can tell what the eyes of the Masters would have perceived. Maybe they would have painted me as I painted the room - the old bespectacled middle aged man covered with splotches of various colors, struggling to make his home look like a castle, from atop his yellow paint stained ladder.

Maybe it would look something like the painting van Gogh did of the inner corridors of an asylum (and yes my son's room, my whole house could be considered an asylum - though I will not divulge the type of asylum it offers). Too bad I have to go up there and re-coat it today - hopefully with 2 final coats - so the job will finally be done. I was kind of hoping that the job could wait until they figured out how to bring back a guy like van Gogh so I could get his opinion after the weekend, but then less gets accomplished by me on weeknights, so a Saturday is always better to get it all done in a day. Well by all, in this case, I mean the last two coats. Yes this is the same job that has been persistently pestering me into performing work on the home front for about 2 weeks or so - just one room, but still not done. Why is that ask you, because I am no van Gogh says I, nor am I adept at house painting.

First of all let me say if you paint and use a primer sealer that dries to a somewhat enamel like appearance, never use two coats of it. Just one will suffice and two will make the surface so slick, it will be akin to painting atop gloss enamel. In other words and eggshell enamel in red will not adhere properly, but will go on with the premiere stroke of the brush only to slough off with the secondary or tertiary strokes. Thus if you are lucky, unlike me, when you decide to cover all that messed up red with white flat paint - your child will love the larger than life effect of the white paint. Mine did not and insisted on red, which was his due as I had promised him his pick of colors. Let's see that was scraping and opening cracks, plastering twice (and still not getting it really well done but good enough for a government worker), then two coats of primer sealer, then a coat or two of white on the ceiling, then starting with the red eggshell enamel but finding out it would not properly adhere, then finally winding up with a couple of gallons of the same red in flat finish. Of course this meant multiple trips to a large hardware store owned by a larger conglomerate, wherein I wanted to explode on some each of my visits there. Oh well, I have the implements of artistic expression all laid out and ready for the job today. I am feeling better than I have over the past two days, when I felt rather indescribably miserable.

Now I have to grab my son out of the shower and put a roller in his hand. Hmm - I wonder why he is taking a shower now - he must have not thought that he too has to get this job done. He has not helped me as much as I would have liked with homework and all, but today is his day to slave away. Tomorrow is his birthday, so it had best be done today for him to get the most enjoyment out of his day tomorrow. Of course if he does not help, I may just not lift a finger, and leave it the way it is for him to complete by the time he reaches 30, and since he is still in high school (his last year, and no he has never been left back) that will be a long wait.

All the best,
Glenn B