Goodbye to All That

Yesterday the nice people of Wintersteen Trucking, specializing in Arts and Antiques, picked up the collection of paintings that have been stacked under our beds and in our closets and took them to the Wolfs Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio. I say nice people because the couple, who have been transporting art around the country for decades and are based out of Kansas City, have two rescue dachshunds that ride around in the cab of their 28 foot truck with them. "We always get our dogs from shelters," the wife told me. One dog had a cataract--"she's 18"--and the other dog dragged himself over to greet me.  He has spine damage from when his former humans--and I use the word humans ironically--moved and thought throwing an individual out of a speeding vehicle onto a six-lane highway is how you treat your friends. The woman trucker was petite and chic--tight jeans high boots--and after discussing the art of handling a 28 foot diesel truck, we talked about fine art and its worth.  "I love this job because I'm not stuck in an office and I get to meet interesting people and handle beautiful things." We talked about Clarence H. Carter, the artist whose work Paul and I own, and how he was one of those people who could adapt. He was born in 1906 and his career spanned a century that saw representational art replaced by abstract expressionism replaced by minimalism replaced by conceptualism. And he always landed on his artistic feet, successfully experimenting with styles that worked in each era. It makes him hard to categorize and therefore a harder sell to collectors, but much more interesting than artists who spend a lifetime doing variations on a theme. My favorite of his styles is the Over and Above series of compositions (like the one pictured here that he painted in the 1960's) of animals leaning over a wall, as if they walked up to have a chat and stayed to have Carter paint their portrait.  There is dignity in these animal portraits. This is what Carter had to say about these paintings:

...the world of other creatures.  We look at them in fascination and wonder.  From this strange world of fact and fancy stare back images both real and unreal of what perhaps we might be to others, but never to ourselves—the Somebody Else.

He loved other species, plant and animal. A local newspaper asked him once what he wanted for the new year and his reply was, "More trees and fewer people." He had guard geese, Hector and Cora, at his farm in rural New Jersey, and mourned with them when their egg failed to hatch.  He took it into his studio, one inspiration for his eggs paintings, I'm sure. He always had free roaming cats and dogs.  He was heartbroken, later in his life, when his beloved cat, Billy Carter, failed to come home one evening. Billy's disappearance heralded his own decline.  

I think Carter would have liked the truckers who loved animals and their two dachshunds who escorted his work to its new home.