Steve McQueen stares at the viewer from a sitting position in the lefthand space — steely eyes, cowboy hat. Two stubby rifles dominate the righthand space: “A sidearm like nothing any lawman or outlaw had carried before — The MARE’S LEG Lever Action Pistol.”
Describing a painting under construction feels like explaining a joke before you tell it. Normally I’d let my picture embarrass itself personally, but I’m not yet shameless enough. I see so much really good work on other blogs that showing mine is like exposing a torso with love handles while in the company of rippling six-packs.
JMN2018, Rifle Hoist. Oil on canvas. 18 x 24 in. Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols, All rights reserved.
The Mare’s Leg is a pistol because it can be holstered, a repeating rifle because you can jack torrents of hot lead from it. It must have been the AR-15 of the factitious Wild West in which “Josh Randall” operated as bounty hunter.
I devoured that TV series and others like it as a kid. Why am I at such cross purposes now with the gun culture that raised me? My dad left West Texas ranch life behind to become a college educator five-hundred miles away. But he returned to that life thematically throughout his long second career as an artist.
I fled Texas as soon as I could to become… a college educator fifteen-hundred miles away! Jeez. The last thing I wanted was to follow in his footsteps. We weren’t that close. Yet here I am in the Lone Star state again, living in his house, painting guns….
JMN2018 Justice of the Piece, Oil on canvas. 18 x 18 in. (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.
“Purge” film actor Ethan Hawke said, “We love guns. We love violence. And then we hate it when it happens. We have a weird dance with violence, as a country.” (NYTimes)
I’ve hesitated to use that quote because I want this blog to favor wit and celebration over polemics. I point out only that a reverse strategy lay behind Mark Antony’s line, “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” There’s something of that in my mediocre parade of rootin’ tootin’ gun toters, except I invert his reversal. “Mischief, thou art afoot.”
JMN2018 Go Ahead, Make My Tea. Oil on canvas, 18 x 18 in. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
HJN died here in 2013, leaving me a ton of blank canvases and supplies. I guess I’ll die here, too. I hope that’s a long time away, though. These canvases need to be messed up first.
JMN2018 Hoss. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 in. (c) James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
EthicalDative 
Postscript to “A Modest Proposal”
Law West of the Pecos, Tom Jones drawing.
When I still used Facebook I put up a version of the nonsense I’ve blogged here as “A Modest Proposal” (with nod to Jonathan Swift). A Modest Proposal At the time, a bill to foment the sale of silencers was before Congress. I don’t know where the matter stands at present.
From out of the blue, a gentleman appeared in the FB comment section. He informed me that the efficacy of silencers was greatly exaggerated in the movies. They did not, he said, suppress the report and flash of a firearm to the extent portrayed. He concluded that it was right and proper for gun enthusiasts to have greater access to silencers in order to protect their hearing.
I thanked him as neutrally as I could for his feedback. I haven’t the fortitude to cross swords with Second Amendment crusaders. I surmised there might be a contingent of them who monitor social media in order to catch and rebut messages possibly adverse to their cause. Had he taken my FB post seriously? How had I even come to his attention? Who knows? The man disappeared as abruptly as he had surfaced.
The point is, the argument I put forth there, as well as here in “A Modest Proposal,” is the sheerest of sheer nonsense — as much so as Swift’s satirical claim that one-year-old children of the poor could be “delicious nourishing and wholesome food.”
Silencers? I’m not brave. I shun confrontation. Oblique satire is the only refuge I have against what I consider to be arrant folly.
(C) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.