Painting...artist?

I am not a painter.. In so many ways I am not. I am not a house painter, wall painter, or an artist type painter…

Yet, somewhere, probably in some big garbage dump or in the sea, as San Diego dumps their garbage in the sea..(disgusting) or has been burnt at the county dump… there has been pictures painted by me.

Not great pictures, but pictures that are at least lookable. If I did it free handed, they wouldn’t be. But in the 1960’s and 70’s I did paint in the evening. It was my down time, so I did many over the years, as the kids were in bed.

So if I was so horrible at painting, how did I get away with so so? I am sure there are a lot of you out there who are over the age of 50, who know how.. It was the rage in the 1950’s and 60’s.. I wonder if they still sell them… It was paint by numbers… So if you could stay in between the lines, you could paint. I did mostly horses and dogs.. some cats.. and some scenes. They came out like that artist that you have to stand across the room to see the picture.. because if you were up close you could see I didn’t fare much better at the age of 20’s and 30’s than I did in kindergarden for staying in the lines..

What I did like about it, is .. if I didn’t like the color the artist chose for the numbers, I would change the color or where the blaze was on the face of the horse. There was something calming about doing them…

Paint by numbers is now 60 years old … dreamt up by an artist called Dan Robbins. Thank you, Mr. Robbins, for giving so many of us the enjoyment of being an artist, for those of us who clearly were not.