Paintings and Stories

Hanging Out With a Bunch of Hoods (The Origin of the Term,"Magruder")

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There's no accounting for the accretion of eccentricities as the years pile up. In this case it was a joint effort, literally. Two ol'boys, the Brothers Magruder, lived in this shack and grew dope of the marijuana variety long before it was a popular career choice of many local residents seeking to avoid the nine to five. Paranoia being the operating imperative of many cash croppers these two built an elaborate early warning system. The cars were left by who knows who and housed speakers and sirens, that were activated by trip wires running everywhere. The scrap metal in the foreground was a booby trap, consisting of holes and cables and nests of razor wire, all guaranteed to dissuade potential intruders seeking to disrupt proceedings. After a successful period of maximizing some rather select principles of free enterprise, the brothers left, probably for Arizona as some of the original "Snowbirds".

Now here's the thing, these pioneers of what has become an important contribution to our economy left another legacy. Its called an eponym, I believe, where someone's name becomes synonymous with a thing he is is closely associated with. In this case the Old Magruders were bachelors or widowers, so we call an old single guy a "Magruder", as in "The old magruder lives in the shack down by the creek."

Painted on a full sheet of Arches C.P.140 using my faves from W/N. The horizontal compo is debatable under epert scrutiny I'm sure, but its just some fun...thats my excuse.

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Ron Morrison

I Like to Paint Junk

Vintage Tin

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There is a certain intangible quality about old tin, as it sits rusting away in fields and junkyards, that fascinates those who discover it. There is a mysterious, eerie sensation of looking into the past through the face of a survivor that compels artists and photographers to preserve these vestiges of simpler times in their paintings and photographs.

These tin derelicts assume attitudes of defiance, puzzlement, and resignation in their stand against the onslaught of weather and metal scavengers. Paint blisters and peels under the scorching sun, revealing layers of colour and primer that both blend and contrast in expressions of abstract art. Faded scales of original blues and greens flake from oxidized surfaces as old metal returns to natural hues.



Memories lie in these metal shells like the dust on their dashboards which even the wind cannot blow away. Faint traces of things past remembering are reflected in glass that is almost opaque, and chrome that is dull and yellow. Shreds of rotten upholstery, hanging from roofs and torn from seats, provoke speculation about particular circumstances that are now long forgotten.

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__________________
Ron Morrison

Florida 98

My grandfather (the surgeon) had a sister who was a nurse. She married a steel tycoon who she nursed back to health after a bout with some contagion or other. She lived in Florida and would drive up to visit every couple of years. She was my great aunt but was known as Aunt Anne to everybody. She was an imperious matron with a heart of some valuable mineral. They were lean years and she brought chocolate and oranges for my mother and her five brothers and sisters at Christmas during the depression. Now, near as I can tell she did this for over thirty years. Here's the deal...she drove up some time around 1958, from Florida to Vancouver, British Columbia. She must have been at least eighty. The weather was cold and it was starting to snow when she was due to start back. One of my uncles, her nephew, worked for Air Canada and suggested she fly home, which she did. She left the car, never came back again, and my uncles who couldn't register the car beat around with it for a while and just left it. I rediscovered it pretty much as they left it in a friends yard when they subdivided their big city lot. It was towed away and that was that.

My great Aunt lived for at least another ten years and her millions were drained dy unscrupulous nursing home operators. My grandmother had to fly down and pay the funeral bill. She (my great aunt) used to buy a big new Olds 98 every couple of years so that it would make the five thousand mile trip without breaking down. She died broke. __________________
Ron Morrison

White Lightening and the Black Mariah

White Lightning and the Black Mariah

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For those of you with tender sensibilities, dwell not on the details of this morality play, the lesson is unclear, but the tale entertaining I hope.

With the proceeds from his private distillery, this free-enterpriser built a replica ante belum mansion in the style of the Victorians. Long after prohibition he maintained a hobbyists interest in the distribution of his product - "white lightning". He had two sons, one was relieved of his mortal coil in a friendly fire napalm incident in Vietnam and the other was lost in a firey crash on a bad track in some backwater hellhole (don't jump out of your knickers, its just a word). Due to his poor attitude about the inequitable distribution of divine providence, his wife bolted for town. Annoyed with his God and anxious for a face to face with his maker he dispatched himself for the showdown with a colt forty-five.

What is left behind is the shell of the house and his last rum runner. It is a four-door "sleeper" with a three twelve wedge and dual Holley four-barrels. He called it the Black Mariah. Now curious thing about these cars is that they were built with steel that was bought from the Japanese after WWII. The steel was reclaimed from the blast sites at Negasaki and Hiroshima and sold as part of the post war rebuilding of Japan. Problem was, that since it had been irradiated, apparently it rusted quickly. And quality control on these cars was bad. But this one has sat for forty years and is still intact.

It seems that a ghostly light, strange and nonsensical (like this story) floods this hollow on occasion and provokes from the viewer speculation about circumstances that have uncertain details. I did not want to "fix" this painting by correcting its flaws because the light suggested the story to me. So I just stopped painting and wrote the story fearing by fixing the goofiness I would ruin the effect. Its doodled on the back of a scrap of Arches. Its from the imaginato of course...I did look at a picture I had taken of the car for reference and went from there.

Hot August Day

Bink link to blow..up!

http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w...s/IMG_1875.jpg

On a hot August day fifty years ago there was blood and glass on a sandy road above the river canyon. Beer and whiskey bent this car on a tree and a girl with raven hair was killed.

When I find wrecks, occasionally I wonder how they met the end of their useful lives. I have been on that sandy road and I have felt the cold touch of something as I take pictures. And I think I can see that blood. And there is always glass...


Ron Morrison

The Industrial Park

The conceit of this production is that people will live anywhere they can park and recreate as opportunity affords. Full sheet on the back of something or other. Bink link for bigger.
http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w...s/IMG_1869.jpg __________________
Ron Morrison

Going, Going, Gone to the Other Side of the Road

Homesteading, logging, working in the mill, hauling shingles, growing your own grub, hunting and fishing, and then the kids head for the big city as soon as they are old enough. Maybe built a new house on the other side of the property? Bink to blow...up!

Donor Cars

When restorers are looking for parts, donor cars are often cut up and harvested. This accounts for entire sections missing. The two Caddies in front are missing substantial sections after amputation. What I really enjoy doing is creating a clutter scene with intersections of shapes and colours that are unqiue to each car. Its fun to be the creator of a scene that doesn't exist until brush hits paper.

I bashed this thing off in a hurry to force me to "decide and do" rather than fiddle and consider. Its in an effort to just paint. Its on a full sheet of Arches 300 with W/N and DaVinci. There's things to fix and the paint wasn't completely dry leaving a couple of darker spots...but you get the idea. Bink to explore the molecular structure of my own little world....sort of.

Transportation - A Personal History

Down in the back forty, against the tree line, is a small pile, all thats left of a much bigger car hedge. The light dances on a bright hot day and the shapes and colours blend and contrast in expressions that are almost abstract. When the wrecker went through only a few hulks were left, the ones with a special significance to the man who farmed the land. Cars like the honeymoon express, the first born rocket to the hospital twenty miles away, the grad taxi, the grandchild's first Christmas ride, and the last trip to the "home". This fanciful depiction was done without reference or concern for accuracy as a tribute to the notion of a car monument, created randomly and inadvertently, as a byproduct of just living, by a person reluctant to let go of an essential part of his personal history.

There's a whole nother world to visit through the miracle of "binking".

The Home of the Surgeon

Trying to get a back to basics look here. Unembellished. I am going to add some silliness and cook up the story. Bink for a revelation.

My grandfather built this house, he was a surgeon in the first world war. He married my grandmother in 1916. While courting her he was married to another woman and engaged to a third. He sorted out his affairs (literally and figuratively) and legalized his preferred choice. My grandmother was the illegitimate daughter of a very famous English poet and claimed to have been born on Christmas day, 1900, which would have made her a child bride. When my mother found my grandmother's birth certificate after she died it showed her birth date as 1896, making her almost twenty when she was married. My grandfather the surgeon was twenty four years older, which might explain his large inventory of partners, present and past. He built this house in 1919, by which time they had three kids under four. When the flu swept through, they lost their precious three year old boy. My grandmother was so upset that she would no longer live in the house. She wanted to move to a more moderate climate with no mosquitoes and warmer winters. My grandfather who was shell shocked and partially deaf told her that if they moved he would never build her another house. They moved and rented for the rest of their long lives. He never practiced medicine again.

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Ron Morrison

The Fishscale Chapel

Bink to blow...up!
A Norwegian fisherman was pitched out of his small fishboat while jigging for cod during a squall. Snagged by a log and deposited on the beach, he believed he was delivered there by God. Filled with "The Spirit", he read "The Book" and built his version of a church and delivered homespun sermons to the seagulls. The belfry contained a big brass bell which can still be heard when strong winds whistle through. The shingles are cut in the fishscale style.

Found Under the Bed

These have never seen the light of day, just organizing. Detonate for a larger picture.

More of the Same Only Different

I just put this up to change the scenery. Bink to Blow!

Gone With the Tide

The title of my new pulp fiction. Blast for seismic upgrade or enlargement.

On the Rustaway Plan

Sometimes things get filed or forgotten or lost and then there they are, again, and you realize that they were "pre-studies", idea paintings, or flawed versions of salvageable compos. Maybe they are okay, after not looking at them for awhile. You get the digital out and started shootin'. You get them in the compu-library and edit and you realize you got some tolerable stuff. Maybe not the ones you'd put in your self-directed bio epic, but some fun stuff nonetheless. They are your own personal art history. You can say,"This was the first version of a later painting that sold to a fancy private collection or I gave to my Grandma cuz she was the only one that liked it and she's only a little blind." And then you start thinkin', I am an artist, this will be in my autobiography, better organize them figure out the dates, gotta be accurate for the students when they are studyin' my life......Then you have some lunch, maybe a little nap and never think about it again, cept you got a whole bunch of new old pics to show the unwary visitors to your new post. Ha! Bink Me You Fool!_________________
Ron Morrison

Ford Cabriolets are Slick

I dug this one out from under the bed. I gotta redo and fix it but I think it will work. Macrotize with a bink.

Founding Members

These two were the start of the painting below. I kept adding and rearranging. These are the paintings, the ones where I have a bunch of cars in a group, that I have the most fun doing and they are my personal faves. Stretch the parameters with a bink.

Run'em, Wreck'em and Store'em..Auto Wreckers, Sort of

Where the roads are rough, sometimes washed out and the crusher never gets there, you can find yards full of cars that are all one make, but different years. They were bought for $25 bucks, mid last century, run into the ground and when they would go no more they became permanent gothic yard ornaments. The next runner brought in and kept running as long as interchangeable parts from the previous wrecks would allow. And then the next one was acquired...thats how yards in remote areas got full of cars. The details man, the details, just give me the details...okay, okay, just bink to blow.

Alright, here's the story. On the other side of the narrows, past the two foot drop where the currents meet, past the thirty foot whirlpool, its as calm as a mill pond. During prohibition some comedian built this house with three stories and his version of a light house. There were logging camps all up and down the coast and fishermen everywhere. Since the cops wouldn't bother going past the maritime hazzards, the setting was perfect for booze and women for rent. Navigation through the narrows at high tide was risky business but highly rewarding whether you were buying or selling. Rum runners did it and brought the women with them. The loggers and fishermen came in from the north and some braved the narrows from the south. Either way they managed to frequent the Logger's Maritime Motel. They came in one lung Easthope double enders, fishboats, cruisers, tugboats, skiffs, runabouts, canoes, rowboats, whatever they could manage. The light was a hollow welded lantern with a glass orb on top. Below the "lantern" was a round room with a fire pit that provided the light and warmth for customers seeking seclusion (however well illuminated). You could see it a long way off and everybody knew what it meant. It lasted through the depression, coast guard patrols shut it down at the start of WW2. They hauled the customers off and nobody went back for anything. You can see strange lighting at dusk, things glowing...maybe its just the sun at a certain angle... Blast for exploded view.

Logged In

Just playin' around with the paint...like it or don't. Could be the start of some style exploration on my way to nowhere in particular. Panoramic expansion available with mouse bink.

Bonnie Loch

Another land locked retiree, awaiting repairs but more likely abandoned to the earth. Expand your horizons through subject growth-bink.

Spent on the Shore of Malcom Island

This hardworking boat has finished working and will return to the sea flake by flake. They are everywhere here and yet they disappear as the industry vapourizes. Bink for a closer look at the inner workings.

The Voyager

I am exploring the colourful yet gritty approach. I don't think they will be big sellers but they are more realistic yet more exagerated at the same time or something. This building actually sits on the Fraser River in North Bend. Splode it.
This building was a "Logger's Hotel" on the bank of the River Fraser. The car has no relation to the abandoned lodging. Its a "runner" that conveniently died by an open space where it underwent the ritual "tire letting". Buy it for 25 bucks, run it as long as you can "haywire" it together and the brakes last and where it dies is where it rests forever or until the crusher comes.

Plymouth Among the Rocks and Grass

Allrighty then, I redid it with a rock under it. I like this style.



This forlorn specimen is sitting in the yard of a homestead that has been abandoned since 1966. We have Scotch broom everywhere now and it grew out from underneath this wreck. And moss is actually growing on the trunk and hood. Blow it up.

The Bel Air Sat in the Salt Air

Now this gorgeous car was left on the beach in a remote area of Vancouver Island. It came into a logging camp on a barge and was left when the camp burned, nobody came back for it. Why it was taken in in the first place is a mystery or why it didn't burn for that matter. Its gone now so don't bother looking. Bink for more in depth baloney.

Queen Anne Shanty-Home of the Happy Medium

Okay here's the story. When I was a kid this was the house of a local "entertainer". By day she read taro cards and tea leaves. She stopped short of gazing into her crystal ball, but she did mount a glass float on her roof, a symbol of her trade I suppose. The interesting thing about the float was that she had figured out how to light it up with a red glow. It had to be kerosene or candles because there was no power. So I guess her income generation program involved extended hours. She didn't close day or night. It was near the beach, a shanty with log "ginger bread" details and pretentions to a Queen Anne Style. Another comical aspect was that because the shack had no foundation it was sinking so you had to stoop to get in so it kinda looked like a hobbit house. This is my idea sketch, just a doodle, the trees are too red, the spot of light leads your eye out of the picture etc...I am collecting ideas-painting on scraps just gaining momentum. __________________

Idea For a West Coaster

I have always thought the Californian watercolourists of the mid twentieth century were boffo superb. Interpretive, full of motion, light, colour...just all round fabulous. This is my salute to them,
especially Duane R Light. I am going to refine this idea.

The Velasquez Palette

Bink to expand.

Demo

This is the final result of a step by step demonstration I did for "Paint Doodles". Bink to blow for greater appreciation of nothing in particular and everything in general.

Just about