the sterling roses of big sur
Sterling had never had his portrait painted. His father, a one time artist now embittered angry sage of the back woods bar, painted portraits of all of his children, except for his eldest, who received a more visceral sort of affection. He was a masculine man, in his thirties, but had the demeanor of an ignored teenage boy who liked to spit and smoke camel cigarettes. He had a wholly American sadness that hung from his head in deep brown locks and limped across the bar in a cowboy strut. His smile, merely a poker face. When you spoke to him he would look up at you (as he only stood five and half feet in boots) with the look of a boxer measuring your steps and counting your breaths with the intention of striking at your Achilles sentiments. He never attacked, although you were of the unexpressed knowledge that he could at any time, rather he left you to the discomfort of his eyes, sadly questioning and effeminately charming in their vulnerabilities.
His father, Neil, claims to have introduced the west coast to LSD, and to have turned on all of north beach’s musicians, creating, from the doldrums of a stale rock’n’roll scene, a fresh psychedelic sound that would travel around the world more times than the moon. This was in the early sixties when hippies were still beatniks and jazz was still cool. He would sit for hours at north beach dive bars, drinking table wine and conning girls into posing for nude portraits, laughing at queer Ginsberg’s paranoia and lying about hanging with Mingus at negro jazz joints. 1968 being his annus mirabilis when he pioneered an underground art movement in the Haight and became father to his first step away from freedom. Now he drinks neat bourbon and sits alone for hours, still in his work clothes, watching his paint-less hands crack in the dry cold of Big Sur’s redwood night. He once painted a portrait of his youngest daughter over a ten year period. What started out as a girl swinging in joy as a child turned into whatever his current feeling was for her. It is currently a curious face seen through an aquarium, but three layers of dried oils and five years beneath the surface, sleeps a contorted face of a girl with a fish hook through her neck, being dragged to shore. While no one can see that history, it is there, just as surely as the loss in the wrinkles of his crow’s eyed stare. It’s not that he couldn’t have made it as a successful painter, but having a kid and a beaten sense of responsibility at a young age, took him down a different path. He has never forgiven Sterling for his birth, and refuses to honor his victor in paint. He used to punch his son, but is aware of his son’s inherited strength and again has to acknowledge defeat to him, this golden boy named of silver.
Sterling attempted to paint, under the dictation of his father, but could never get the water to flow down stream. It only appeared to flow the wrong direction, to the secret joy of Neil, who was able to retain something sacred from the reaches of his unwitting thief son. So now Sterling does not consider himself an artist. He fashions praise-worthy furniture from stumps of deadwood scavenged from his south coast property, and places them in obscure galleries with only a small price-tag attached. Priced much too low to be considered high art, it never receives the attention worthy of it’s craft and sits, dusty and un-purchased, under piles of over-priced shawls and handmade candles. It is true that all art is a self-portrait, and if you look closely enough, you will recognize Sterling in a three legged redwood end table, slowly gathering dust and going mostly unnoticed.
His father, Neil, claims to have introduced the west coast to LSD, and to have turned on all of north beach’s musicians, creating, from the doldrums of a stale rock’n’roll scene, a fresh psychedelic sound that would travel around the world more times than the moon. This was in the early sixties when hippies were still beatniks and jazz was still cool. He would sit for hours at north beach dive bars, drinking table wine and conning girls into posing for nude portraits, laughing at queer Ginsberg’s paranoia and lying about hanging with Mingus at negro jazz joints. 1968 being his annus mirabilis when he pioneered an underground art movement in the Haight and became father to his first step away from freedom. Now he drinks neat bourbon and sits alone for hours, still in his work clothes, watching his paint-less hands crack in the dry cold of Big Sur’s redwood night. He once painted a portrait of his youngest daughter over a ten year period. What started out as a girl swinging in joy as a child turned into whatever his current feeling was for her. It is currently a curious face seen through an aquarium, but three layers of dried oils and five years beneath the surface, sleeps a contorted face of a girl with a fish hook through her neck, being dragged to shore. While no one can see that history, it is there, just as surely as the loss in the wrinkles of his crow’s eyed stare. It’s not that he couldn’t have made it as a successful painter, but having a kid and a beaten sense of responsibility at a young age, took him down a different path. He has never forgiven Sterling for his birth, and refuses to honor his victor in paint. He used to punch his son, but is aware of his son’s inherited strength and again has to acknowledge defeat to him, this golden boy named of silver.
Sterling attempted to paint, under the dictation of his father, but could never get the water to flow down stream. It only appeared to flow the wrong direction, to the secret joy of Neil, who was able to retain something sacred from the reaches of his unwitting thief son. So now Sterling does not consider himself an artist. He fashions praise-worthy furniture from stumps of deadwood scavenged from his south coast property, and places them in obscure galleries with only a small price-tag attached. Priced much too low to be considered high art, it never receives the attention worthy of it’s craft and sits, dusty and un-purchased, under piles of over-priced shawls and handmade candles. It is true that all art is a self-portrait, and if you look closely enough, you will recognize Sterling in a three legged redwood end table, slowly gathering dust and going mostly unnoticed.