Steinbech and Saatchi and Painting

This is the latest in what has become my "old man" series.


Travels with Charley

Why that name, you may ask? As the painting evolved I decided to place the old fellow  and his dog looking longingly at the window of a travel agency. He is shoeless, as if longing for a walk on a sandy beach. He is actually standing on "sand" at the window and looking at sand in the posters. Of course he may simply have lost his shoe.

 I was suddenly reminded of "Travels with Charley" - a travel memoir by John Steinbeck, full of interesting characters, insights into life and searching thoughts on loneliness. When he was sixty years old he set out "in search of America, with the same longing for adventure I tried to represent in the figure. He traveled in a truck named for Don Quixote's horse, Rocinante.

Speaking of literature, I looked forward to reading "My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic". How disappointing! How arrogant! Saatchi is "the most influential art collector of our time" and founded the 70,000 square foot Saatchi Gallery in London. He has refused in the past to be interviewed, but did condescend to respond to journalist's questions which form the basis of the book. When asked his opinion on the "point of art", he said it is "to stop our eyeballs from going into meltdown from all the rubbish TV and films we happily look at the rest of the time."  When asked if elephant dung is as valid as gouach, he said; "Elephant dung is so last season, darling." 

Saatchi is married to Nigella Lawson, who he admits is too good for him, but according to his friends, his real and unwavering crush is on himself. Read the book if you must, but time is better spent at the gallery itself at 

 http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/