One evening a million years ago I had dinner with my family at The Chariot on Nolensville Road. I know it was a Thursday night because they had a catfish special on Thursday nights, and we would go often. There, we ran into Leathers Maddox, a friend of my father's and a respected landscape painter (with a very cool name). When he learned I was an illustrator, he told me about a friend of his who had passed away recently, a retired art director from Genesco who spent his retirement years painting portraits. His widow wanted to sell some of his things: his paint, brushes, morgue file, easel, paintings. He gave me her number and I visited her the very next day. It was a fascinating, sad, and thrilling experience to peek into his private life, his process, and have access and the opportunity to buy his stuff. I bought a lot. I have treasured it and learned from it. Visiting his tiny studio space, I saw evidence of a tinkerer's mind. He had rigged an old large format camera up to serve as a projection device and had lots of notes and reference materials to indicate he was interested in photography and how it could aid in his portrait commissions. Possibly, accidently, inadvertantly, he created some beautifully surreal photographs while learning about f-stops and lighting. I'm incorporating some of his photos of a curious wigged mannequin into new collage works, although they are perfectly beautiful just as they are.
