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Julius V. is a painter and a friend. I haven't seen him in many years
but the last time we were together he shared with me this story from his boyhood
which, in the funny business of painting, becomes my story too.
His father and uncle were two business men who practiced a zero sum catechism of emotional accounting which was common for fathers of the WWII generation. One page from this book reads that sons should not grow up pansies and so together the two men came upon the notion to drop kick Julius into manhood. They decided this would best be accomplished by flying him up to the state of Alaska where he could hunt down and shoot a polar bear. That is about all there is to this story except that a polar bear indeed was found and trophied, and then rendered up into two dimensions so it could be used as a hearth rug. Also, there is some question as to whether or not Julius himself shot the bear. Yet in the simple rubs of this story are all the elements for a dramatic painting. There is first of all the rite of passage into adulthood which is experienced differently in boys than it is in girls. All children are given names when they are born. A girl often loses the patronymic when she comes of age, but a boy when he comes of age, has that name objectified into a psychic tatoo inflicted by the father. It is a scar, a symbol burned into the map of memory by which a boy will come to navigate the wilderness and hunt his solitude. More particularly, this is a story about the rite of passage as it is experienced by the child artist. With passage into adulthood, toys become the tools of adult enterprise. The Daisy popgun becomes a 30-ought and the teddybear becomes a target. However for the child artist like Julius something goes screwy and the tools never completely evolve out of the memes of imaginary play. I paint Julius as I would paint myself --at the moment when the administrations of the father somehow fail to take hold and toys are forever after strange in their utility. |
| 2/21/97 | oil on panel | 18"w X 19 3/4"h |
