JETSTREAM
Egg Tempera
28 x 38 inches
For years the artist had been thinking about painting one of these cooling ventilators that grace the roofs of barns and outbuildings. They always reminded him of the helmet of a suit of medieval armor. One sunny afternoon while walking to where his son was playing basketball, he turned up an alley he had never been on before. As he neared the end of the alley, on top of a garage roof straight in front of him was this unbelievable piece of utilitarian folk art. Not only was the pattern painted on the ventilator unusual but on top of it was this wonderful fish cut out of tin acting as a weathervane. The patina of the whole object with its encrustations of time was exactly what the artist had been searching for. Being that the artist lives near an airport, seeing this fish in the sky made him think that it was swimming in the "Jet Stream".