BARRY HOWARD: PROFESSIONAL BEACH BUM...

When faced with the necessity to claim an occupation, I have always written "artist" in the space provided. As of late, however, I have realized that, perhaps, I should come out of the proverbial closet and own up to my true vocation....that of Professional Beach Bum. In truth, it is what I have always aspired to...and the responsibility for this career choice can rightfully be placed at my older sister's doorstep. When we were little, (my sister being not quite as little as I), we use to go to the drive-in movies. Mom would drive us there in the family 1956 Buick Century. It was a big treat. There was a playground underneath the big screen that we could play at before the movie started, then go to the snackbar and get Cokes and popcorn, hang the little speaker inside the car window and watch the movie. My sister seemed to be the unofficial designated movie chooser. Probably a good thing since I was too young to have any strong opinions on the subject. So, deferring to my older sibling's guidance, I saw every Elvis Presley movie made, and every Beach Party movie as well. It was the Beach Party movies with former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, that impressed upon my young, malleable mind that there was an amazing world out there made of sun and sand and surfboards being waxed to the driving beat of conga drums and Dick Dale's percussive guitar rhthyms.

 

 

Having spent my youth in the flat, hot, land-locked town of Fresno, the lifestyle portrayed on the big screen in front of our big blue Buick seemed like Shangri-la to me. I wanted nothing more than to escape the spirit-crushing boredom of my hometown and live a life of waves and woodies and girls dancing in bikinis. Alas, that would have to wait a few years, as I was too young to move out on my own...so I endured the time by reading Surfer Magazine and drawing pictures of waves and surfers and dreaming of the day I could make my escape. Fate smiled on me when the telephone company transferred my mom to Los Gatos, a mere 30 miles from the Northern California surfing capitol of Santa Cruz. I began to ditch school as much as possible and hitchhike over the hill to the beach. When I turned 17, I moved out on my own to the coast. Since then I have spent the biggest chunks of my life surfing, sailing, and walking beaches from the island of Maui to the Florida coast. I have shuffled my feet through the sand from Key West to Puerto Rico and Jamaiica. And I have lived and camped along the endless beaches of the Northern California coast.

Bohemia, my trimaran at anchor

Later on, I took up sailing and let my feet dangle off the outer hull into the water as I sailed my trimaran along the Florida coast. Miles of white sand beaches drifted slowly by while I layed in the nets between the hulls and sipped on a cold Pacifico. Of course, I found that it really wasn't very much like the Beach Party movies portrayed it to be, but that really doesn't matter in the end. Life on the beach is different than the Hollywood version but no less wonderful.

To this day, nothing makes me happier than walking barefoot on the sand, letting the tide race up around my feet and watching the waves curl and break as they end their journey across the Pacific. I evolved from drawing pictures of waves to painting them in oils. Had things been different in my childhood, perhaps I would have taken a different path...maybe I would be a corporate executive, but instead, I'm a Professional Beach Bum, and it's all my sister's fault. There is, perhaps a certain stigma of irresponsibilty associated with my chosen lifestyle, and maybe that comes from the "Bum" portion of the term...but most beach bums do some sort of work. I actually work 5 or 6 days a week....just not anything most people would call a "real job". Nobody considers being an artist a real job. Even I don't consider it a real job....but then, I never wanted a real job. All I ever really wanted was enough to pay for my simple needs and get to spend a good part of my time at the beach. Well, that's worked out pretty well, as I now work and live and sleep at the beach. My childhood dream has been made manifest.....I am a Professional Beach Bum...life is good! The moral here is, don't be afraid to reach for your goals....no matter how lofty....

 

My studio on the beach

 

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WET INTO WET...

I am going to take this opportunity today to wax rapturous about the pure bliss of working with oil paint. When I lived in New Mexico I learned that they have an official state question, which is: "Red or Green?" It's what they ask you when you go out to eat there and it refers to what kind of chili concoction you want on your food. Among artists and art lovers, there is a commonly asked unofficial question which is: "Oil or Acrylic?" I am asked that question on a daily basis here at the Venice Beachwalk art show.

People usually act surprised when I say I work in oils...I guess because the majority of painters work in Acrylics these days. I use to use Acrylics myself, many years ago and was always a bit frustrated by them. They dry so quickly that there is almost no time to work with the paint. You end up with layers of paint that are, for the most part, separate from each other. Oils, on the other hand, stay wet and give you time to move them around, blend them together or wipe parts away. Often times people will say they would love to work in oils but they don't have the room....I usually just smile and point out the fact that I live and work in a 12 square foot home/studio. Granted, it helps if you are a naturally tidy and organized person. If you are one of those artists who sling paint around like Silly String at a Spring Break keg party and you end up with it all over yourself then yeh, maybe working with oils in a small space wouldn't work for you. Fortunately for me, I am one of those aforementioned naturally tidy and organized artists. I do my best to keep track of where the wet paint is so I don't end up spreading it all over everything I own. Once I finish working on a painting for the day, it goes into a pizza box where it lives until it is dry. I've mentioned in other posts that I use a medium called Liquin in my paint. It mixes with the oil paint right on the palette and has a number of wonderful qualities, one of which is that it makes the paint dry overnight. I have all day to work with the paint and blend and move it and don't have to wait weeks for it to dry.

LIQUIN with salt & lime

The Windsor & Newton Company, which makes Liquin, doesn't pay me to promote it, but they should, considering how much I encourage other painters to try it. It also works as a glazing medium, making colors more transparent the more you mix in. It enhances color and leaves a very tough surface after it dries. Blending color is a wonderful advantage over acrylic but I think what I like best about working in oils is working wet into wet. When you pull your brush from one color into another color, the color and value of the stroke changes as you go, creating a whole spectrum of spontaneous variation. With acrylics your brush stroke is going to be pretty much whatever color you have on your brush and that's all. Where's the magic in that? Interesting paintings are very much about subtle variations and spontaneous and unplanned results. Although in fact the results are not completely unplanned, as you more or less know what will happen, but there are subtleties you will be delightfully surprised by.

RAVEN by Barry Howard

And then there is that somewhat intangible aspect to oil paint vs. acrylic...and that is the indescribable and subtle difference in the look of the paint itself. Not to get too New-Agey but there is something about oil paint that can't adequately be expressed through verbal description...it's like the moment when a rainbow falls across your eye, infusing the world with color...it's like the whisper of dragonfly wings on your cheek...the fragrance of Gardinia on a tropical moonlit night....like being kissed on the forehead by the lips of the Goddess.

 

 

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SWEET DREAMZ AND CRASHING WAVES

Lately I have been parking the caravan down along the beach at night. The sound of waves crashing on the beach is the soundtrack to my dreams. It's hard to imagine a more peaceful place to sleep. Summer is definitely drawing near with warm nights and warm, even a few hot days now. The mornings have been so beautiful lately that I have even started my day, (after coffee of course,) with a swim in the ocean. It always leaves me feeling exhilarated and blissfully alive.

WINDOW ROCK by Barry Howard

My days and weeks have settled into a routine of sorts here in Venice...after the sun comes up and breakfast is done I roll down to my spot on the boardwalk and set up my paintings and my easel and spend the early part of the day working on new pieces. I am really enjoying these small paintings. I usually finish two or three a day and put them in the drying box, (which is really a pizza box, but hey, it works perfectly). I always look forward to opening the box the next day and seeing what I did with a fresh eye. I am told by the other artists that soon the tourists will come and sales will pick up....as it is, it seems I have survived the long, moderate winter of Southern California.

In the evening, after the art show on the boardwalk, I pedal down to my favorite tree and make my dinner, have a beer and maybe read for awhile. Then I head over to the cafe on Pier St. to do my computer stuff over a pot of peppermint tea. Finally I roll on back to the beach for the night. Weekends are a bit rowdier than the rest of the week. Tonight as I write this, the Doors cover band is in full swing at the nearby bar, and the party people have left the beach and are now being raucous and drunk along the beachwalk. Down the beach there are fireworks going off...probably to celebrate Cinch de Mayo. Myself, I am quietly settled into the caravan, happy to have a refuge from the roudiness of the weekend circus that is Venice Beach.

NIGHTWAVES by Barry Howard

 

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GYPSY CARAVANS, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AND WARM BEER

It's been almost ten months since I first moved into the caravan so it seemed like a good time to report in on how the experiment is going. I am somewhat surprised to report that I actually am enjoying it more now than when I started. I expected that by this time the 12 square feet would begin to feel pretty small...instead it feels bigger. I thought that living without refrigeration would be burdensome but am surprised to find what an easy adjustment it's been. Many things that Americans refrigerate simply don't need to be.

And I've discovered that the Brits have it right....beer loses much of it's flavor when it's refrigerated...especially dark beer. I actually now prefer to drink my beer at room temperature. Maybe that famous American beer that is so popular with bikers for some inexplicable reason, (I shall call it Buttwiper Beer....or Butt Light), maybe it's better cold, but that's because cold is all it has going for it...it would taste like warm piss if it wasn't served cold...but any decent beer seems to have a fuller flavor palette when it's room temperature.

But I digress...the point is, after living and working out of the caravan for ten months, I am feeling it is a pretty full lifestyle. I know I won't live this way forever...no lifestyle is forever for me...but it is a period of time that I will always remember with great fondness.

Recently, my sister asked me to write something about my own definition of success for a blog she is writing. I decided to include what I wrote in this blog post, as it has a lot to do with my current micro-lifestyle and the things I have learned from living in such a simple and basic way. The following is what I wrote.
REDEFINING SUCCESS
Life seemed so simple back in the 50's, and the idea of personal success was pretty straightforward; you stay in school, go to college, get a degree and get a good job with a good company and then begin your steady climb up the ladder...buy a house, a nice car, have a family and take a couple of vacations every year. After a lifetime of this one could enjoy a comfortable retirement. It was the American Dream and it actually did exist. Maybe it still does exist in a few isolated little pockets, but overall, the American landscape has changed dramatically. Getting a job with a big company is no longer a guaranteed lifetime mealticket for security and an ever increasing standard of living. Many mammoth companies have gone the way of the Mammoth, vanishing without a trace. Jobs have been automated and outsourced and people who thought they had security are suddenly wondering what they will do now. Back in the 50's we didn't need so many of the things that we now regard as necessities...we didn't need I-phones and I-pads and cable bills so we could have 100 channels. As a culture we have become convinced that we need a new car every few years, thereby keeping ourselves in a never-ending pattern of never-ending car payments. Everything has become disposable where we use to keep things and get them fixed when they broke. Rent or house payments didn't eat up the lion's share of one's income back in the 50's. Paychecks were smaller but they went a lot further. A college education didn't leave a young person saddled with a lifetime of crushing debt. One person with just about any kind of job could support a family...now both members of the family work, and it's a struggle even then. This is what's known as a bygone era and it ain't comin' back.

So if the old model for success is becoming increasingly elusive, then we need to re-evaluate the path we take and maybe redefine success. So what is it? One of the problems is the word itself..."success" is a noun, which makes it seem like a thing one attains and then you "have" it. But in reality, success is more of a verb. It's a moving target and it's different for everyone. Some people might define success as a life that is filled with adventure and travel, or a life that is dedicated to making positive changes in the world. For others, success might not be such a lofty goal...maybe it's just being a good partner, a good parent, and having good friends. It's that thing that will allow you, at the end of your life, to look back and feel that it was a life well-lived. I recently read somewhere that when Bob Dylan was asked to define success he said that success is when a man wakes up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between he does what he wants. For me personally, that defines it pretty well. It's about having the freedom to choose how you will spend your day, rather than having someone else decide that for you. But that's just me...others may be willing to trade daily autonomy for a larger goal, and that's fine. The point is, success is a very individual thing and what's important is that we design a life that is in harmony with our own personal definition of what success means. I meet people everyday who are reevaluating their lifestyles.

I think they are drawn to me because I am living a rather unconventional life that is very much in the public eye. I live in a 3 foot by 6 foot micro-gypsy caravan which I pull with my bicycle and out of which I paint and sell my paintings as I travel along the way. I don't have a house, or a car, or a TV. I live without electricity, running water or refrigeration. When most people come to realize how I am living, and that I seem pretty happy, it seems to make them question how much they really need to be happy. Very few would choose to downsize to the degree that I have, but my lifestyle definitely blows a hole in the idea that one needs lots of stuff and a big house to be happy. My own definition of success includes lots of time to paint the things I love to paint, and the time and means to travel, and the freedom to choose how to live each day. It means being able to support myself by doing my art, and in today's art market, this is a challenge, but it's a challenge I'm up for because it fits my own definition of success.
The current ever-changing economic playing field has spawned the growing interest in the tiny house movement. People are downsizing and unplugging and simplifying their lifestyles to allow for a greater freedom to live a life that makes more sense than just being a mouse on the wheel. Part of the silver lining to the economic cloud is that more and more people are giving up on the idea of getting a good job and are instead becoming entrepreneurs. I think this is a great trend, as it allows people much more freedom to design their lives to fit their own definition of success. Choosing to be self-employed is the only real security one has these days. You aren't going to lay yourself off or outsource your own job, and if the economic landscape changes you have the freedom to adapt to it without losing your livelihood. This goes hand in hand with simplifying your life. The more one has to carry, financially, the more precarious and burdensome your life becomes.

Simplicity buys freedom to do more of the things with your money that you want to do. It can be pretty discouraging to make a decent income and watch it all disappear every month on "necessities" that may not really be necessities at all. Someone once said that you can have anything you want...you just can't have everything you want. It's all about choosing...do you want time to smell the roses, or do you want more stuff? Do you want to be able to spend quality time with your friends and family or is a bigger house and more expensive car worth more to you? There is no right answer...life is, as they say, what you make it.

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MICRO PAINTINGS on Daily Paint Works

The Back Bay © Barry Howard

With this post I am announcing my return to the wonderful daily painting gallery and website, Daily Paint Works. I had an online gallery there last year and ended up closing it down for awhile because I wasn't painting quite daily enough. Lately though, I am cranking out paintings by the bushel....well, maybe not quite by the bushel, but I am painting a lot. I've mostly been doing very small ones, like 6"x6" or so, and painting two or three a day. This has been a really good way for me to explore a lot of different methods and ideas in a short amount of time. I feel that I am growing as a painter as a result, because I don't have a lot of time invested in each one, and it's making my brushwork a bit freer and allowing me to experiment more. At the end of a week of painting, I look over what I've done and see what has worked and what hasn't. It's been like a crash course in a way....anyhow, it feels exhilarating. Please click the Daily Paint Works widget in the right hand corner of the blog and check out my gallery there. Some of them I am putting in the auctions they run, so it's a chance to get some nice artwork at pretty good prices. Thank you for taking the time to look at my work.

BEACH BREAK © Barry Howard

 

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WINTER COMES TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

It's 2 AM...what am I doing up writing this blog? I shall get to that in a minute, but first I must apologize for being a bit lax in my blog posts lately...it's the cold...I may have mentioned this before but I really don't like the cold...I am a Sun Worshipper. Cold weather makes my circulation slow to a crawl, my nose runs, my eyes water and my fingers curl up into pathetic claw-like appendages that seem to be grasping desperately for warmth. Winter has hit Southern California like the Grim Reaper, sweeping over the beaches and covering all forms of life in ice....well, OK, maybe not ice..there is no actual ice, but it IS cold with daytime temperatures barely getting out of the low 60's sometimes with a windchill and nighttime temps plunging into the 40's, or as they would say in Seattle, beautiful balmy weather. But as I may have mentioned before, Seattle-ites are all crazy and the proof of that is that they live up there in the frozen tundra where people have to hack through the frozen ice to hunt for seals and then use clamshell scraping tools to carve out the seal blubber to put in their latte's. I know this because my friend Ethan told me all about it and he lives up there...well, he told me about the Latte's anyway...he didn't mention the seal blubber and stuff but I think he was just trying to put a good face on things. So putting the warped perspective of Washington residents aside, it's freakin cold. People here are wrapping scarves around their necks and wearing coats!...AND hats! Which brings me to why I am up at 2AM writing this blog. We are fast approaching the shortest day of the year, which is one of those things that people here in Southern California often point out. It is a way of being optimistic about the brutal conditions we are trying to endure here. Soon the days will begin to lengthen and Spring will be in sight. It's how we hang on through the cold, dark days of the season. We know there will be an end to it. But the night comes on early...like by 4:30 in the afternoon the light of the day is starting to fade and my life here in the caravan, without electricity has adjusted to the cycles of dark and light rather than the artificial rhythms that electric light allow. After my work day ends I usually hang out at the local coffee house until dark and then, braving the biting chill of the night, I pedal off to my parking spot. I turn on my burner and warm the place up and then usually climb into bed by 8 o'clock. Six hours later it's 2AM and I'm awake. I recently read how they have uncovered some old writings from the nineteenth century that refer to a "first sleep" and a "second sleep". Apparently, back then before electricity, when people had to watch TV by candlelight and laptops ran on kerosene, people slept twice in one night. That was the common thing. They would go to sleep with the sun, sleep 6 hours or so, then wake up and do stuff for a couple of hours, and then go back for their "second sleep". There are a lot of hours of darkness to fill when you run by the sun and stars. So that seems to be what my body has naturally adapted to. So here I am, writing this blog.

I've made a number of changes in the caravan since I first headed out on the road about 4 months ago, when it was warm, (sniff, sniff). When I sensed the coming winter I set about doing a few things to make it more cozy. Firstly, I got rid of the little pump up white gas stove that had to be used outdoors and installed a propane burner inside. This has been AWESOME! It allows me to sit up in bed and make coffee without the hassle of getting dressed and going outside and setting up the side table and pumping up the stove, etc. Plus it uses way less fuel than the white gas stove did and burns a lot cleaner. Another improvement I made was adding a pull out awning to the Starboard side and a storm cover for the windows on the Port side. The awning has been also awesome as it keeps the rain and dew well away from the little roll down shade that serves as my door.

 

So when it rains I can actually have the shade rolled up, stay inside and make soup and watch the rain drip off the end of the awning. My most recent addition has been the flower pot heater. I saw this online and decided it was the perfect heating solution for my tiny space. The way it works is you take a small bread pan, put four or five of those little tea-lite candles in it, and invert a 6 inch clay flower pot over the candles, resting on the edges of the bread pan. It will burn for about 4 or 5 hours and does a great job taking the chill out of the air, and you can simply light it and go to bed without worrying about it. I decided to build it into the galley counter so it would take less space. When it's not in use I put a cutting board over it. It would work even better if my caravan wasn't so open air, but at the moment there is no shortage of ventilation. When I want to really heat it up quickly I put the flower pot on the propane burner and turn it on as low as it will go...the flower pot heats up and radiates a lot of heat, even after the burner is turned off. It's made life much more comfortable now that the Winter weather has arrived. We are finally getting a break though. This week is promising temps up into the 70's, and, while it's not the 80's, I can deal with it. Well, I think it's time for my "second sleep" now. It's 3:36 and time for bed.

 

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THE DRUNK EVERGLADES COWBOYS

Quite a few of my wanderings have been on two wheels...sometimes by motorcycle and sometimes by bicycle. This story is about one of those bicycle trips. I had been living in Key West at the time and decided to head toward the California Coast by way of bicycle. I scrounged up some old bike parts and assembled a three speed bike that only had one working speed. I didn't think that was too critical because I was traveling through Florida at the time, and Florida is flat. It was not a modern light weight touring bike by any means...I had a rack on the back and mounted an old wooden coca-cola box back there to make a sort of pickup bed where I could keep my food. I put a little herb and spice rack in it, upright against the back of my seat...that's where I kept my various herbs and spices and my bead stash. Then I lashed my bedroll onto one side of the rack and and hung a bag made from an old persian rug on the other side for my clothes. Over the front wheel I mounted a wooden box that carried my art supplies. It had a picture of Ganesh the elephant god, Hindu patron saint of travelers. Mounted on the lower frame I placed a Galliano bottle wrapped in woven palm leaves to carry water in....so yeh, not super light weight. My first challenge was making it up the 131 miles of bridges that connect the Florida Keys. In those days, (this is the early 70's) the bridges were very narrow, just a lane wide enough for a car and then a little curb with a railing. The longest bridge was seven miles, and that one I decided to cross in the middle of the night when traffic would be lightest. It was terrifying. I started over it at 2AM and could watch the headlights from an approaching truck coming up behind me from a long way back. When it got fairly close, I would lift the bike up onto the curb, which wasn't really wide enough to stand the bike straight up on, then i would straddle the railing, leaning out over the abyss and the ocean below and hold onto the handlebars with one hand, trying to get as much room between me and the semi-truck bearing down on me as I could. The lights on the bike worked by one of those little generator things that rub against the wheel, so they only work when the bike is moving...which meant I was pretty much invisible to the truck. Just about the time the truck's headlights hit me, and the driver realized I was there with my bike kind of leaning into the lane, he would try to swerve but by then there wasn't really time and he would thunder by, shaking the bridge, me hanging on for dear life out over the water. So this was how the whole trip over the seven mile bridge went....pedal, pedal, pedal...put the bike up on the curb, straddle the railing, lean out, and FA-WHOOM! The truck thunders by inches away. By the time I got to the other side I was exhausted and put down my bedroll and fell asleep right next to highway one.

But as it turned out, that wasn't the most dangerous part of the trip. When I got to Alligator Alley, the narrow highway that runs through the Everglades I was literally getting blown off the road by the slipstream from the huge trucks that were roaring up through there. I rode on and on into the night and it was hot and humid and I couldn't stop and rest because when I did the mosquitos would have me for a late night snack. As long as I kept moving the breeze kept them off of me. Somewhere around 2AM the next morning I came upon a little bar out in the middle of nowhere. It was open and there were three pick-up trucks parked outside. The idea of getting out of the bugs and taking a break seemed great and besides, I was pretty exhausted. I pushed open the door and found myself looking at a long bar occupied by three cowboys. I could tell they were cowboys because they wore cowboy hats and cowboy boots and cowboy shirts. I wasn't wearing any of those things.

I had a Stetson Open Road hat (kind of a Clyde Barrow sort of style) with my paintbrushes stuffed into the macrame hatband. My hair was to my shoulders, my jeans had been patched with the skin from a roadkill rattlesnake I had found and skinned in the desert, plus other patches of velvet, satin, leather and various other bright colorful fabrics. I wore a necklace I had made from bones and beads that had some sort of small animal skull I had found, hanging from the middle of it. Various pouches hung from my belt. I stood in the doorway and the three cowboy hats turned and looked at me...then the bartender, wiping a beer mug with a rag, turned and looked at me....then he looked at the three cowboys and then he looked at me. The cowboys had been there drinking for hours and were obviously pretty drunk. All sorts of thoughts flooded my mind at that moment...the first was, "TURN AROUND AND RUN FOR IT!" But I immediately realized this would be folly. I was way out in the middle of nowhere, there was only one road through it, I was on a bicycle and the cowboys had pick-up trucks. There would be no escape. So...I walked up to the bar and sat down next to one of the cowboys. Immediately the other two slid off their barstools and one stood behind me and the other moved up next to me on the other side. I was surrounded.

"Howdy..." I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

"Well whadda we got here?" slurred one of the cowboys.

"What I can't figure out, "began the other," is, is it a boy or a girl?"...he punctuated his query with a loud belch.

"What the hell are you anyway?" said the third, rhetorically I assumed. I decided to answer anyway. I figured that they must have somehow found me threatening to their way of life and to the very fabric of society because I looked so unfamiliar to them. My task was to convince them otherwise.

"After a few more slurred slurs aimed at me I decided that I better try to engage them in conversation, and maybe, if I was lucky I could get out of this alive.

"I know I must look pretty strange to you guys," I said, "But that's because I'm not from around here. I come from the west coast and most people where I am from look a lot like me, because that's normal there. We have different customs and different styles of dress out there. In fact" I said, "if you were to go there, people might think you looked strange to them, because they wouldn't be use to seeing people like you. But even though I may look odd to you," I continued" I'm probably not all that different in most ways. I believe in being a good person, and being honest and working hard. I love my country and my family and I am thankful that I live in a free country." OK, I was laying it on a bit thick here, but the occasion seemed to call for it. Well from there we all four got involved in a long conversation...I, playing the part of the visitor from another planet and they were just drunk enough that they were willing to listen to what I had to say, swaying and swigging beer as I talked. Somehow, I guess I said all the right things because within the hour I was their buddy. They were slapping me on the back and insisting on buying me beers. We had a pretty good time together. After a couple of hours I bid them farewell, shaking hands all around and stumbled out the door and got back on my bicycle. The cowboys all got in their pick up trucks and roared off, waving and wishing me safe travels. I pedaled off up Alligator Alley, feeling refreshed after my rest stop, smiling with the warmth of newfound friendship and a good beer buzz.

 

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