cowboy

“The Cowboy’s Evening Meal - restauration & revival”
January - March 2010

    This painting is a return to an on-going series that might be called Table Manners. They all happen at a table, an object I like, for eating, writing, drawing, reading, even sleeping! A table is a little like an oasis in a house, a site where people and things come together.

    The picture takes place in a shanty-bar. The cowboy has just finished his meal and is reflecting about things - things he’s seen, things he’s heard or lived or fantasized. Cowboys can do things like that.
    While outside the rain blows down.
    A basic restaurant in shack-like conditions. But he’s been restored.
    Me too, I was restored, getting the paints out again after too long filling in the cross-word of life at what the Date Wizards call the end of the year. And a longish spell of writing. In painting terms, it’s also a revival of a few slightly neglected mannerisms.   

    When I was getting near the end of this painting I started reading “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, and I began to wonder if my painting with the cranky cowboy was quite as whimsical and humorous as I first thought.

For example, did he, by love or by lust, have any children, and where might they be?

Anyway, here's the painting, starting with the early versions and ending with the latest.