Who wants to die a sad and broken person?

Posted on July 13, 2018 by JMN

This gallery contains 1 photo.

Who wants to die a sad and broken person like Melville — show of hands? One berates the ether doggedly with “this is me” effluvia. When, what, how much to reveal vexes continuously. Thrust, parry, withdraw, resurge, repeat. To trim … Continue reading →

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Variation on a theme — for the daughters

Posted on July 12, 2018 by JMN

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The egg came first. A hen is only an egg’s way of making another female. (Deference to Samuel Butler) (C) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.

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Heartsickness

Posted on July 11, 2018 by JMN

(Lizard on my patio, JMN, photo)

In ‘09 I had congestive heart failure. Good medicine and doctoring fixed it. Over time my ejection fraction rebounded from fifteen (bad) to sixty (normal).

Since ‘10 an appliance that looks like a Zippo lighter rides subcutaneously near my left collarbone — a pacemaker/defibrillator. Three wires snake from it down through a vein to respective sides of my heart (many people need two wires, I need three). They make it beat nice and symmetrical. My cardiologist said, “We’re making your heart more efficient.” Right on.

The gadget has paced me transparently out of a couple of minor arrhythmia episodes I didn’t even know were happening. It has never had to deliver a shock. Knock on wood.

(Andrew, JMN, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 in. (C) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

This brings me to my dear neighbor who killed a snake in her yard yesterday. It was fat. She makes a circle with her indices and thumbs: This big. She didn’t know if it was poisonous or not. Who wants to find out? What if it bit one of the pet goats? Or the German shepherd? It lay in a puddle near the gate to the animals’ enclosure, latent with menace. It could’ve been dangerous, who knows? Best kill it.

And that brings me to the dairy farmers in Wisconsin who are contemplating having to slaughter portions of their herd because of a milk glut. “You can’t turn off the cows,” they say. Actually, if you kill a milk cow you’ve indeed turned her off.

In the continuum I inhabit with fellow creatures, I’m lucky to be a member of the species that decides what life is given and what life is taken. That’s as close as I can come at the moment to diluting sadness with celebration.

(C) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.

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What is a Southern writer?

Posted on July 10, 2018 by JMN

(HJN Landscape, Oil on rawhide)

“People can hardly help loving the hands that rocked their cradles or the landscapes that shaped their souls, but I doubt there’s a single writer in the South for whom life here isn’t a source of deep ambivalence.”

(Margaret Renkl, “What Is a Southern Writer, Anyway?”, NYTimes)

(HJN, Landscape, Oil on rawhide, detail)

(C) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.

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This just in!

Posted on July 10, 2018 by JMN

“In football, there’s a fine line between winning and losing. It’s football, and football is sometimes like that.” (Fernando Hierro, Spain’s coach, NYTimes)

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“Wanted Dead or Alive”

Posted on July 10, 2018 by JMN

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.

Rifle Hoist, JMN, 2018. Oil on canvas. 18 x 24 in. Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols, All rights reserved.

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.

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.)

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.

JMN2018 Hoss. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 in. (c) James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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Directions

Posted on July 9, 2018 by JMN
Home for Sale, JMN, photo, 2010. (C) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.

Home for Sale, JMN, photo, 2010. (C) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.

<— Je Ne Sais Cove
Brigand Dunes —>
<— Grotto Blotto
Dog Platitudes —>
<— New Deli
Donny Brook —>
<— Post Hockish
<— Ergo —>
Propter Hockish—>
<— Center For Customer Insights (New Haven, CT)
Academy of Combative Warrior Arts (Richardson, TX) —>

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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Ouch!

Posted on July 9, 2018 by JMN
Tom Jones drawing, bronc-riding cowboy

Tom Jones drawing, bronc-riding cowboy

“I don’t like country music, but I don’t denigrate people who do. And for people who like it, ‘denigrate’ means ‘put down.’ ”
(Bob Newhart)

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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The Painted Word

Posted on July 8, 2018 by JMN

In my twenties I fantasized an artistic project called “The Painted Word” — standing language on its head by meticulously brushing it on canvas. (I didn’t know until later that Tom Wolfe had used the phrase for the title of … Continue reading →

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“They are female.”

Posted on July 8, 2018 by JMN
JMN2016 Woman in White, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 in. (c) James Mansfield Nichols, All rights reserved.

JMN2016 Woman in White, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 in. (c) James Mansfield Nichols, All rights reserved.

“Maybe our leaders, who seem so quick to threaten violence or shut down the government, should spend some time with dairy cows. They are ponderous ships of milk. There are infinite births to attend. They slow time. They are female.” (Robert Olmstead, NYTimes, 2013)

“If <name country> is indeed to be transformed, and the corrosive grip of fear loosened, it is women who will make that happen.” (Roger Cohen, NYTimes, 2018)

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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