I was asked about the painting hanging in the background of my last diary. There’s a story behind it, of course.
Twenty or so years ago I used to get my hair cut at a funky little place on North High Street called Waldo’s on High. For those familiar with Columbus Ohio, that part of town, called the “Short North” used to be the arts district before gentrification drove out most of the galleries. Today it’s mostly bars and restaurants.
Waldo’s couldn’t really decide if it wanted to be a hair salon or an art gallery. They cut hair in the back but the front room was a small gallery.
One day I happened to be walking by and I was floored by a display of paintings by an artist I had never seen before.
My tastes in art are pretty eclectic. I have a few Japanese wood-block prints. I love the French impressionists, especially Van Gogh and Monet. I love Art Nouveau, particularly Alphonse Mucha. I’m a big fan of Edward Hopper. I have maybe six pieces by southwestern artist Amado M. Peña Jr. We even got to meet him once when we wandered into his gallery in Santa Fe.
I am certainly no art expert. I haven’t had any art classes since elementary school. I have zero artistic talent unless you count cooking and building bicycles. I do have “a good eye” as they say.
When it comes to art and architecture I just know it when I see it. It either speaks to me or it doesn’t and this guy’s stuff really clicked with me. I knew right then that I had to have one of his paintings.
It was hard pick just one, but I finally settled on this one. It cost me around $500, which was a fair bit of money for me at the time. Since it was the first piece he ever sold, the artist met me the next day when I came to pick it up.
His name was George Kraemer. It’s been many years but I remember him as being very approachable and intelligent. He said he was inspired by artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.
I love everything about this painting. Her period correct flight gear. The B-17s juxtaposed with rings of Saturn. The artist’s use of color and perspective. I fear my camera doesn’t really do it justice. In person the colors really jump out at you.
The artist told me he put the butterflies in the foreground so that they would appear larger than the bombers. He also told me that the sign with the ice cream cone was something he remembered from growing up in Portsmouth Ohio. The silhouettes in the pickup truck are the artist and his daughter.
I grew to like this painting so much that I starting wanting another one. That’s when I got the idea to have one commissioned. Or maybe that was Mrs. Kong’s idea. I forget. It would have been sometime after the summer of 2001 because that’s when I bought the car.
George was still living in Columbus and I managed to look him up. I told him I wanted a painting with a B-52 and our 1957 DeSoto FireFlite. Beyond that I just wanted it to be in “his” style. We brought the car to his houe so he could get a good look at it, along with some B-52 pictures. I remember that he had a young daughter and a couple cats.
A few months and a couple large checks later I had my painting, titled “Fire Flight”.
He got the car down to the last detail. The license plate reads “01-16-91” which was the first night of the Gulf War (he had asked me for a significant date). The driver is supposed to be James Dean. The figure walking across the parking lot is the “Man with no name” from the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. I don’t think the woman is supposed to be anyone in particular.
The only thing he got wrong was I flew the B-52G and he used an H model in the painting. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.
I think the “Stratolounge” sign and SAC emblem was a particularly nice touch.
Sadly I lost touch with George. He had talked about moving back to Portsmouth. My internet searches have turned up nothing. I don’t know what became of him.
If you’re still out there George look me up and I’ll buy another painting!