A Tenuous Moorage at The Mouth of the River

The dark prospect of my own mortality was first impressed upon me at age six. I may have previously considered my own demise in theory, and who would be sorry, but only as an abstraction. It was forty-nine years ago, and that is a startling fact to begin with, that the child who lived on this boat died. The outfit that she lived with, amongst whom were her parents, was a collection of beach bums and ne'er do wells that had accumulated on this old fishboat. It was precariously moored where the sand spilled from the river delta and formed a beautiful beach about a quarter mile south. The moorage was built with raw logs beachcombed from along the coast and strapped together with planks scavenged from the throwaway pile of a local mill. It was darn near impossible for me to navigate this floating catwalk, but the pigtailed zephyr whose future was compressed, sailed over it to the beach and explained the tactics necessary for successful passage into the world of wonder that was that old boat. First time I ever saw a surf board or someone take a crab out of a trap or glass floats or a whole bunch of other exotic stuff. I don't remember much about her parents or if I even met them, but I will remember her always. She had strawberry blonde hair, according to my dad, blue eyes and freckles which is the standard issue description of a type of beautiful child, but that was incidental to the thing that was so striking about her. She could sing, plain and simple. It was miraculous to me that a child could sing in clear, melodic, wonderfully coloured voice at six...now maybe she couldn't sing very well at all but she sure sounded good to me. She sang songs that her parents must have taught her, songs she heard on the radio, songs from movies..."Who's That Doggy in the Window?" being a favourite.

Summer over and I was in grade one, the fall of 1959, when my mom told me that she had died. I learned later that it was from meningitis. The whole motley crew abandoned the boat and it sat there for at least thirty years until it was gone. The circumstances of her death must have been horrible for everybody concerned.

Bink to explode.

All Washed Up

Messy painting just for fun...bink it!

Riverbend Homestead

This is my imaginary idea of what an old homestead complete with abandoned cars would look like. It sits on a bench above the river....Bink to blow!

I Can See Daylight

Barn Fresh

Re: Oh, Henry, Say it Ain't So (Big Three on the Brink)

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There is a term used to describe finding something under hay in a barn and dragging it out and offering it for sale. No matter how rat infested the item is, it is ironically referred to as being "Barn Fresh" and is advertised as such. Regurgitated is usually more accurate. When I do this again I will make the cars way more digested... So maybe this is in reverse maybe the barn isn't eating the cars so much as spitting them out...?

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West Coast Work

Bashin' It Till I get It

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I am after that breezy west coast feel...motion,colour, fun and narrrative content. Calligraphic brush strokes, rich darks and clutter, sweeping shapes and morphed forms...someday I'll get it. Full sheet, I almost always use a full sheet of arches 140 C.P. with W/N as the core of the colour program.

The easiest way for me to get closer to what I think I am after is to let'er rip with a compo that I have already worked out. I wanted to squash this compo a bit and make the shapes more linked and flowing.

Since I am a thin air painter (they are pulled out of thin air) its a challenge to get the thing to make any kind of sense...

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Ron Morrison

The Preserve of Captain Flood

"Captain Flood", sounds like a pirate, but no, he was a fisherman of indeterminate origin with a proclivity for gambling away the profits. A poker player before all the fuss. A shack on the beach, where women with dubious reputations and colourful dresses visited and occasionally sat out on the porch, was the off season domain of the Cap'n. We watched from down the beach, much entertained by the scandalous proceedings. The abandoned site brings back memories of how the beach was before the days of high taxes and big houses. Bink to BLOW!

Where Ever You Go There You Are

The Inheritance of John Innes "Office" Rocker

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In the pantheon of all great nick-named individuals, my buddy John Rocker, stands tall. As the studious son of a notorious father, he spent many childhood hours in his room reading, organizing his baseball cards and generally staying out of the way of his ol' man. His dad wasn't that bad a guy but he wasn't a citizen either and he wanted junior to get out into the world and let some daylight into the swamp. Which was his way of saying that John should follow him into the logging biness and become a professional drinker who collected his wrecked cars out back.. Well John, of the delicate sensibility, resembled by poetic inclination more his gentle mother than his dad. But here's the fun, his mom's maiden name was "Innes" and in the habit of giving the first born male his mother's maiden name, he was christened, John Innes Rocker and they called him Innes. Well, Rocker the dad, when asked about the whereabouts of his son would always say, "Innes office" and not in a proud tone but rather as if it was the shame of the whole outfit that the boy took after his mother, just for comedy of course. All righty then, as in the case of good puns and great nicknames the symmetry was obvious and brilliant because John Innes "Office" Rocker was both "in his office" and "off his rocker" at the same time so how could he help becoming "Office" and then Offs for short.
When the ol boy died, Offs inherited the junk collection and the shack where he had studied as a child. He never new what to make of any of it and maintained he had been delivered to the wrong family as a baby and that was that. I, on the other hand, drank beer with his dad (later on) and shared his love of junk. Offs got a degree in marine biology and then maritime law.

The Blue Rubber Glove Tableau (BOO! - Six)

Just playing with an idea, I like "clutter" paintings and the BOO! series has been fun.

I am going to finish this painting or do it again...

Hont,Ed 41 Century Road....

Thats the listing in the phone book...Bink to explore.

Shine The Light

Bink to Blow! (BOO! Five revised)

BOO! Lite

A lighter "daylight" version of the previous post...its a fun compo and I'll paint it again.

Bink for the full effect of paint on paper to be revealed...or not.

Shine The Light

"Shine the light out there, I hear something!"

"Its only the seagulls..."


Always the bink...

The Raven Waits...

The raven waits, perched upon a piece of broken chrome...

Binkification is illumination!

The Boneyard

There is a certain culture of acquisition by default that is prevalent in the boonies. Someone wrecks a car on a bend, over a cliff, down a hill with no brakes...whenever an accident claims victims it often leaves a salvageable hulk. These cars were retrieved to this yard, conveniently located on an stretch of mountain road that was particularly perilous and thus productive for the proprietor of this "boneyard". Some of these cars were habituated by reluctant ethereals or so the steward of this collection claimed, mostly in an effort to discourage anyone inclined to borrow parts.
Click to pick up the details...

The Creepshaw Place

Sometime things are so deliciously convenient they are irresistible. That's the case with this scene. The house was inherited by John Creenshaw and he had a talent for junking stuff up including the house, the yard, himself...the unintended consequence of his slovenliness was inadvertent creepiness. So everybody called the property, "The Creepshow Place". Its amazing to me that wit never fails to land in fertile ground...Ol' John the "batch" kinda grew into his reputation and became a part time ghoul. Once again the "ironic" rears its amusing head or "how reps are unfairly gained", because while he sorta encouraged everybody to think he was running some kind of haunted house he was actually an amiable, generous, gentle slob unlikely to ever scare anybody. Mind you Halloween was always fun and we would usually head over to his place with the kids for fireworks and maybe to see if he could set some of his junk on fire.

Bink on image to explore the inner reaches of my watercolour world...

Chainsaw Manor

Its fun for me to look at all the silly/fun things in this painting, I must admit. The tower face was really fun to do without over doing but then again the whole thing is ridikulos. The window dormers were made out of oil drums cut and welded into shape. The mysticism of the builder showed in the various symbols all over the place. The weather vane is a sea gull rather than the traditional rooster. the birds were fun to get in flight. The boat and truck props were subordinate to the house but still visually compelling I thought. All in all I was happy to do it in one go...it will get done again but maybe that will kill the spontaneity, who knows? I had a story but the creep factor won out and the story will tell itself, especially with Halloween coming up.

Sedan Delivery

A friend of mine grew up in this farm house. It was a warm friendly place with stuff in the oven baking all the time and kids hollering and dogs barking. There was no shortage of dandelion wine and my buddies old man smoked big honkin' stinky cigars. We rode to school in the back of this sedan delivery with the yapping dogs licking our ears. There are a lot of old houses on the back of farms all through the valley. Properties have been subdivided and new houses built. My buddy is a developer and his ragtag bunch are very prosperous. He had a younger sister....

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Ron Morrison

Cluttered and Shuttered

Bink to explore the inner reaches of the watercolour world!

Miss Wilson's House

This is a sad story, I admit as much. Miss Wilson was a grade two teacher at the elementary school that I attended. It was a country school on a chunk of land cut out of a farm and donated to the school board in the twenties by Miss Wilson's family. She went to normal school and started teaching, conveniently enough, at the school on the land her grandparents donated. This would be about 1956, I think. By the time I got there she had learned to drive and had set up camp in this house which was also on the family farm and was old even then. I guess it had been her grandparents shack or something. She bought this Dodge and was all set, short walk to work, a cruiser for going into town, in a word-independence. My parents knew her parents, but I never had her for a teacher, although my brother did. Half way through 1960 she got sick and was replaced by an old battle axe the kids called "Bullfrog". She as much as vanished except we knew she was in her house being looked after by her mom. She later went to hospital, where she died of leukemia in January of 1961. She was young and pretty and then she wasn't. Nobody ever lived in the house again and the car is still sitting there forty-seven years later on the farm her nephew now owns. I guess its sort of a shrine and I drive by it all the time and think about her often although I hardly knew her. (As a side note my dad died three years later of the same thing...musta been the water.)

I did this with no drawing, just painted it to see if it would work, I'll paint it again and pay more attention. Its a full sheet of the ol'arches 140 C.P. with assorted paints some of which were payne's gray, yellow ochre, burnt umber, cobalt blue, rose madder, cobalt green...I think that's it.

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Ron Morrison

For Lorne

Now, I may not be able to explain this clearly but I'll give it a try. When we were in high school I had a buddy named Lorne who was a Ford fanatic. We called him Ford Lorne. He always wanted a five-window coupe, but ended up with a four-door sedan his dad gave him for graduation. He was sorta aggrieved about the whole situation and we just had to call him "Four Door Lorne". Well as monikers go it was cumbersome so he became Four Lorne and then just plain Forlorn. To this day he is still Forlorn to his friends and ironically he's quite a happy chap. This car was acquired later on, its a five window coupe, but it just sat and is now truly forlorn rotting at the back of the property. (Don't blame me, I don't make this stuff up...wait a minute maybe...)

The Art Installation

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About thirty years ago someone started to collect old cars and parts and deposit them on leased land at the bottom end of a wooded acreage.. He placed a few in what appear to be aesthetically pleasing positions and stripped a bunch more down to parts and positioned the pieces in rows and stacks. Only he knows what he had in mind. What looks like a junkyard is a deliberate tableau. There is moss everywhere and what light penetrates the trees lands on fenders and chrome and glass and bounces off again. Bus loads of German tourists used to visit and the whole thing became too much as the "installation" became popular and an intrusion on the privacy of the owner of the property. There are a couple of strange buildings with trees as corner posts full of parts and memorabilia. All in all a very eerie creation.

Cons"truck"tive Colouration

Bink to explode the inner reaches of water and pigment.

Barrister's Boat

This boat ended up on the lawyer's farm and was going to be a retirement fixerupper. Cruises were imagined, endless summer days cruising the inner coast, up inlets and down arms, through the straits bliss on the waves. However reality reared up and bit the plan and the boat was scrapped due to aesthetic priorities...it was junking up the garden by the house.

Bink to blow....

Sometimes A Little Colour is Good For The Soul

I sometimes don't have a clue...about colour, but its fun!

Wine Country

When I last saw this house, it was on the dry side of an interior lake fronting on a slough. Now its gone and a winery with irrigation and a reception room has taken its place.

You gotta bink for full effect!

The Poker Palace

Before the advent of the big-money tournaments and online gambling, the boys wagered their wages and parlayed their bets into car purchases and liquor fueled holidays to the coast. This shack is where poker pots were transformed into roadtrips. It was tradition that the winners funded the vacation, but the whole thing could have been accomplished by merely pooling funds. Somehow it was more fun to let the winners have the honour of paying for liquor, hookers, food and lodging.The cars were always wrecks with bald tires that made a trip or two and were then retired to an honorary position guarding the shack. The debris from these trips to the "Big Smoke" litters the yard and the "Palace" spent its sunset years as a chicken coup. Bink for an expanded version.

Back To The Hollow

This is a scene I have painted many times. Its one of my favourites. Bink to blow (up)!

History

PainterRon This is WetC Stuff, just lifted it and dropped it in. Lord of the Arts Courtenay, B.C., Canada

Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 2,245

From The Vault (I Got A New Scanner)

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The "Vault" is a cardboard box. In this box have negatives from the seventies of pictures I took of junkyards. Some of the negatives are of my early paintings. I have been worried that the negs were wrecked. I recently got a scanner and put the images in my library. Most everything was in good shape. I am going to burn them on discs and then they will be safe.

Okay, so I found some things that I thought might be fun to show. These are paintings that I did around 1977. The negs of the paintings were damaged a little, but I thought that created an interesting effect.

Go Big or Go Home

If You Stack Them Neatly, Dear, You Can Keep Them

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This is done in a style that I think is my own. Its one of my favourites. Its pretty near four feet wide.

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Ron Morrison