Picture: Mr. Commissioner
At the end of my talk to the Arts and Culture Commission of the Town of Prescott Valley in April 2018, about my oil painting series, ‘Do you know me?’ At the end of my talk I asked for a volunteer. One Commissioner said “Can we ask what we are volunteering for?” I said I wanted one of the Commissioners to pose for a picture. One Commissioner pointed to the Chairman and said, “He volunteers.”
I took a pair of brightly colored sun glasses out of my purse and asked the Chairman to put them on for the picture. He said, “Everyone knows me by the water bottle I carry at all times”. I asked him to drink up and I snapped a picture of him with my phone.
I proceeded to say, “One day a friend of yours is going to say that he saw you at the Library today”. You’ll say, “I wasn’t at the Library”. And your friend will say, “I saw you on the Library wall”. Everyone laughed.
A week later I finished the painting, Mr. Commissioner, and had it hung on the Prescott Valley Public Library wall outside the auditorium where the Arts and Culture Commission meet monthly. I emailed the Chairman and told him his doppelganger was causing trouble at the Library. His email reply was thank you, which led me to believe that he had no idea what I was talking about.
Silence.
Two weeks later, I get a call from the curator of the Library exhibit saying the Chairman saw the painting of himself, loved it, and purchased it.
