The Lost Paddler Podcast with Robert McAffee Stories Episode 2

The speaker is an artist talking about the unique lifestyle of artists and their love for hanging out in cafes. They describe their studio, which is also their living space, and how important it is to be surrounded by their art. They mention a podcast they host where they have conversations with other artists. The speaker also talks about their love for tea and how it is an integral part of their creative process. They then share a story about a painting they sold to a client who took it to a framer, but the painting got damaged when the framer tried to clean it with a wet cloth. The painting had to be returned to the artist for repairs. Despite the mishap, the painting was fixed and the client continued to acquire more paintings. The story highlights the unpredictable nature of being an artist. I'm just making my cup of tea. If you want to hang out with me for a couple of minutes, let's talk. Artists are a different breed, that's for sure. They're not your run-of-the-mill human beings, and I don't propose to be the first normal one by any stretch of the imagination. And while I'm right here in this little cafe, this favorite place of mine, you know, artists love hanging out in places like this. We work in our studios, at least I can speak for myself. I work in a studio, and I live in my studio. I work there. Maybe you've seen that little cartoon that goes around, kind of a rectangular shape, and there's easels. It's kind of like a drawing of easels, and canvases all over the place, and in the corner there's a sink, and there's a fridge, and a little tiny table, and beside that there's a little bed, and, you know, basically the typical artist's studio where he actually lives, where he actually kind of eats, and everything, because, well, what's more important than being surrounded by our art, after all? And that is, well, that's no joke. That's actually the way this artist lives. I've often said that you should be careful what you wish for, or pray for. It might actually come true. In all the years that I dreamed about being a full-time artist, I was no different than anybody. I probably had lots of illusions about living well, living royally, living fancy, whatever. Well, part of that came true, but not all of it. However, the artist's studio, and being surrounded by my art, that definitely, that definitely came true, completely. But I think I covered all of that in a different podcast. Welcome to The Lost Paddler, a podcast with Robert McAfee and some of my friends. Once in a while, I'll have them drop in. Artists that I know, poets, writers, creators of all kinds, songwriters, I know a lot of people. I've met them over the years, and I think it would be just grand to hang around a microphone and just have a conversation with them. How did you do that? Where did you get that from? How did that inspiration happen? Where did it all start for you? I just can't get enough of those kinds of little tidbits of information, and if you want to soak up some of that, well, just hang around with me right here, right here on The Lost Paddler with Robert McAfee. My tea is just an integral part of everything I do here. I can't paint a painting without some kind of tea going on nearby. I love it. Perhaps a great little cookie or a piece of lemon cake. But I digress, yes. And as I'm stirring this little cup of tea here next to me, it's the coolest little cup. I wish you could see it. It's an Algonquin cup, and my God, those things aren't cheap when you buy them at the park up there, but they're so beautiful. They use the most incredible cobalt blue, and it's just a spectacular mug. I can't go through the park without stopping in and picking one up, and I have quite a collection now, as you can imagine. I can't help but think sometimes about the funny stories that I've encountered throughout the path of my art career. And some of them are funny, funny, but some of them are serious funny. Some of them are scary, funny. Just even as I think about them, I kind of shudder, a little shiver goes up my spine. Well, I'll tell you about one of them. It was way back in 2009 when I first started painting, and by the way, somebody's got a crying baby nearby. I don't know if you can hear that, but anyway, what else is new? Art life is kind of crazy, so let's get on with this. I had a client who contacted me from Maritimes, and this is way back when I still hadn't gone full-time in art. I was still with TD Bank, and she wanted to purchase one of my paintings that she had seen. I think it was on Kijiji or on my brand new website. I can't remember which one it was, but it doesn't matter. She wanted this painting, and it was a 24 by 24. It was a forest scene, kind of a waterfall, mostly reds and rust colors, some trees, but very rustic, definitely, and very much in the abstract. You know, back in those days, I really didn't have much of a clue of what I was doing with oil paint. Some would say I don't have much of a clue about anything, and I'd probably have to agree with you on that, but the truth of the matter is I had been in watercolor all of my life, and so my earliest oil paintings were really more kind of abstract than anything. I've kind of stuck with that over the years because I'm not really much of a realist. I certainly kiss the ground that these hyper-realist artists walk on because I just don't have the patience for that. I don't have the temperament for that. I am a loose, quick painter, and that's all she wrote, folks, so there was a painting that I had done and put up on my, I recall now, it was my website, robertmccafee.com, the very beginning of it, wow, so many years ago. One or two or three images I had on it at that time, well, you go there now and there's hundreds, maybe thousands, including all the sold pages, but anyway, let's talk about this very serious but kind of funny story. Here we go. She called me and she said, I would really love to have that painting you posted. Sure thing. Took payment, packaged it all up, boxed it all beautifully, and shipped it down to the East Coast. Now, as it goes with my paintings, I always sell them without a frame, but if a client asks for one, I will certainly have it done, but as shipping goes, that adds dimensions and that adds weight, and of course, that translates to a more costly acquisition, so in many cases, clients prefer to frame my paintings in their local town where they know a framer already, and such was the case for this particular acquisition. The painting arrived a week later and she was so happy. She sent me a long email saying how much joy it brought to her and how beautiful it looked on her wall, but it needed a frame, and so she took it to her local framer. I'm certainly not going to give away company names here. I don't want to get sued, but let's just say that the place that she took it to was I think the only place in town, and it names with Eichel's, so let's just leave it at that, but she dropped it off for framing, and when she came back a week and a half later, to her aghast, to her shock, to her complete dismay, there were chips of the painting that were missing. Big chips, we're talking a quarter of an inch, a half of an inch, where the paint had just broken off of the canvas. Now she was just totally shocked, as you can imagine, and when she was describing this to me, I'd never seen this before, and you can bet that I was just panicking. You know, packaging up a painting and shipping it across the country is not an inexpensive or simple feat. It requires a lot of work and preparation, and it's costly, so to have it all the way down there, and to have it at her framer, and to have it breaking up, well, there's definitely a problem with that, and she wanted to know if there was something that I could do to help, and I said, well, how did this happen in the first place? She said that the young person working at the counter, who had not been there very long and received the painting for the framing job, while it was in her care, she decided that it might need to be cleaned a little bit, so she took a wet cloth and wiped the painting, the oil painting, from top to bottom, you know, just to clean it up a little bit. Let me pause here, and just have a sip of my tea, yeah, because we have to think about that for a second, and let it sink in nice and deep, you know, a damp cloth on an oil painting painted on a canvas, that's a recipe for disaster, and disaster it was, because in fact, as the water lay on the surface of the painting, now, it makes it sound like it puddled, I can't believe that it would have been that wet, but certainly it was wet enough that some of it got underneath of the paint, and caused the paint to lift off of the canvas, and by the time the frame arrived, and was ready to be assembled with the painting, some of those brush strokes just literally fell to the floor. I think the only way to possibly get past this point in the conversation is to just accept the fact that there was some damage done, and there was some hearts broken, and I can just imagine that the poor soul who did the damage, not knowing what she was doing, it was just a part-time job, I'm sure, and she didn't really have any knowledge of the handling of fine art, so it was a pretty catastrophic moment for everybody involved. Well, you know, I'm the kind of person who tries not to panic. I always try to look for a quick resolve, and let's see how we can fix this. Of course, the painting had to be returned to me to see if there was a way it could be repaired or repainted in those areas, and of course, the framing company, whose name we'll just leave out at this point, they paid for everything, of course, their shipping to return to me, and it turned out to be not so terrible. I mean, I was able to pick off other parts of the paint that had broken away and re-gesso the surface, sand it down and re-gesso, and then basically repainted those sections of the painting, and when I was done, you couldn't even tell that there was any problem. But the moral of the story is, I think she took the painting to a different framer to have it done properly. It's been 14 years, and I've never heard anything further about it, and she's acquired other paintings, so I guess all's well that ends well, but that's just the way things can go awry, and what's that saying, what's that old saying, if it can go wrong, it will, if it can fall down, for sure it will fall down, you know, if you expect it to go right, it'll probably go left. Yeah, the stories of being an artist, and that reminds me of another story. If you've got a minute, I'll tell you that one, too. Gosh, I love tea. It's my friend for life. I remember once being out in a grocery store, and I'm a kind of a cheerful person in public, and I have no hesitation to talk to total strangers, and I remember this one particular time when I was at the cash register and I was paying for my groceries, and for some reason, not only the cashier, but the people in line were smiling at me, and I thought, you know, I'm a famous artist, and they all know who I am, and I'm Mr. Cool Guy here, but it occurred to me that there was something else going on, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Everyone was cordial, everyone was nice. I paid for my groceries and went out to my car, and while I was in my car, I just happened to glance in the rear-view mirror, and there on my left eyebrow was a big patch of white, titanium white oil paint covering my whole left eyebrow. I was just kidding about the famous artist part. Honestly, I don't think of myself in those terms at all. I'm always happy to meet somebody who knows what I do, but no, I'm a pretty humble guy, and I pretty much don't think that anybody has a clue who I am when I'm standing in the grocery line, and it's even more amusing to me when everybody is smiling at me for some reason that I can't figure out, and surely a big white patch on my left eyebrow. Yeah, I get it. Well, that about does it for this episode of The Lost Paddler, and if you want to hang out with me again, catch another podcast another time, I'm going to drop these every now and then. I can't say every week or every day or every month, just randomly, so you got to kind of stay tuned, but hang out with me, will you? And hang in there for another episode of The Lost Paddler with Robert McAfee, right here at RobertMcAfee.com.