Okay, so I didn’t actually win. I was only a finalist in the YA novel contest. But soon I intend to make certain this book gets published. I owe that to these three characters, Valerie Clarke, Denny Cole, and Tommy Bons. I like to say that this book is a comedy about freezing to death… complete with clowns. Honestly, I hope to make you laugh, and make you cry, and maybe stop and think for a moment… “Isn’t that true?”
Here is a study in Looniness… I have always wondered where the edge is… the border between silly, cute, and creepy. I believe I have found it with this bizarro character study. I attempted to add to the effect by making characters seem unbalanced, off kilter, and even growing out of other characters’ ears. The background pulls at your perceptions and senses as much as the primary objects do. And so… I pull a Salvador Dali with a mixed bag of Dr. Seuss, Disney, and Warner Brothers. Melting and fused toons in place of watches and human bodies. If this isn’t surreal, then I don’t know what is. Okay, I admit it. I don’t know what is!
This is a photo of Clan Mickey as it was, not as it is. I’m the porky blue one wearing the beat up old cowboy hat. The Filipina next to me is my lovely wife. Dorin on my right… Henry leaning on Mom… and The Princess with her head on my shoulder. They are all much bigger and scarier now than they were then. I posted this most likely because this photo was lost, but I found it while I was at home sick yet again with a painful malady.
This Paffooney is of a game-character wizard. After a hellish weekend of ill health and stress from family and job, I feel much like I am him. My wisdom comes from walking through fires that burned me black. My magic is made from fighting fire with fire. I will continue to walk in the ways of a wizard. My magic is meant to spare folks from my fate by humor and anecdote. But I know that for many, the most I can do is help them recognize the experience and be able to call it by name. I hope that gives them power over it.
Over the years as a teacher, you run into a large number of students that you will absolutely fall in love with. And sometimes… they will fall in love with you also. Oh, my! What a potentially dangerous situation! But it doesn’t have to end in hurt feelings or criminal charges. Sometimes you find the perfect balance. The little girl that sits in the front row can be the apple of your eye… and you never actually take a bite… and neither does she. It becomes a silent dance of swirling smiles, and laughter. The occasional tear… the valentine card… Making her parents feel good with your testimony about what a wonderful scholar she is. Nothing ever has to be wrong… and if it isn’t, the picture stays with you for a lifetime. One day you will have to paint it. Sweet, sentimental perfection.
There was a time when students who hated me and wanted to ridicule me called me Gilligan. I was young and thin and dorky, and they really wanted to belittle me. Well, I started calling my classroom “the Island” and they soon realized that Gilligan was on a deserted island with at least two beautiful babes who were also single. (Yes, I did for a while have two girlfriends at the same time in real life… Well, I did. It’s not completely untrue!) The joke got turned back on them. Kids started to like the class. Some, who learned a lot, began calling me “Professor” instead. We went coconuts for a while. I could say “no pun intended”, but it wouldn’t be true.
This acrylic painting is called “the Family Outing”. Believe it or not, I painted it before I was even married. How did I know that families have to constantly fight dragons together? Well, before I became the dad with the sword, I was the son watching from the mouth of the cave. The mom in the picture is not my wife. No dragon would ever dare attack my wife. The helpless blonde was more like an old eighties girlfriend, a much less dangerous woman. The dragon, of course, is only just barely dangerous. He represents something like fear of death and dismemberment, not the kind of life threatening dangers of married life, like credit card bills.
This acrylic painting on canvas board represents 23 years of teaching at a middle school in Cotulla, Texas. President Lyndon B. Johnson once taught in Cotulla. He referred to it as the “donkeyhole” of Texas, but for some reason always spelled donkey with an “a”. Many of the students are Spanish speakers. What am I saying? MOST of the students are Spanish speakers. Their version of Spanish, though, has many Native American words in it, especially Aztec words. Almost all of my students, though, were not Mexican. They were born in the U.S. Most were born in South Texas.
This oil painting reflects my love of the Native American culture of spirituality and connection to the natural world. Behind Wakanhca (the Magic Man or shaman), his young daughter has been bathing and is confronted with a glowing stag. Lightning in the background confirms that this is a lightning dream of a spirit animal. I used images that were as authentically Dakota Sioux as my silly old German-American brain could manage.
Honestly, this is my brazen attempt at goopy self-promotion. If you do an image search on the word Paffooney, you come up with mostly my artwork, and, inexplicably, pictures of women named Valerie Clarke. (Valerie is the name of the heroine in my novel Snow Babies, but I honestly never put that name in a tag or a category.) So if you’d like to see, Google it. (“Google it” almost sounds like a Paffooney term itself, doesn’t it?)
