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“John Tenniel and Son. Finest artists’ colors and supports,” says the sign above the old bow window. Daisy hasn’t done any painting for some time. I go along to keep her company while she restocks at Tenniel’s in a narrow-fronted row of shops preserved in gentrified Old Town. The atmosphere of cramped old-fashioned retail pervades the room. A variety of antique cabinets are adapted for display. Some look like repurposed bureaus, others more side boards or kitchen cabinets. They stand back to back in a row, occupying the center of the room, leaving an isle on either side. Most of the glass doors have been removed from the antique bureaus’ narrow shelves rising to the low ceiling. We walk insubdued gray light, towards a bright spot under a small square skylight.
“What do you think Fred, shall I try and lift her off?”
“You might pet her first. Test her reaction.”
Tenniel’s cat, Dinah, lies in a sunbeam among the boxes of Windsor and Newton oil paint with one paw stretched out ahead, as if to say, “Mine.”
“Have you tried, Grumbacher colors over here, or Utrecht?”
“Sometimes use them … I see! No cat no problems.”
“or look at these Blockx colors.”
“Check the prices, Fred.”
“$200 for this Cadmium Green!”
“Yup.”
“So that’s why they are locked behind glass!”
“Highest quality you can get.”
“So, they ought to be.”
“Here’s a big 200 ml tube, of Ochre only $12.29.”
“Earth colors are usually cheaper.”
“Check the cat.”
Hearing us, Dinah opens her eyes, stretches both her gray legs and spreads her claws like vestigial fingers.
She looks at us, with owl-like orange eyes, yawns, gets up and walks slowly across a wooden box of paints to the end of the shelf and jumps to the floor. Daisy steps back to the unsecured Windsor and Newton selection and shows me a 200mi tube of White.
“This is bigger than a tube of toothpaste! a little more than six and half ounces.”
“You getting that?”
“No this is zinc white. I want Flake White, or Cremnitz white
but it is hard to find now because it is made with lead.”
“That’s what Lucian Freud used.”
“Who?”
“You know the British painter. The one who did all those nudes with legs spread and prominent genitals.”
“Oh, that guy! I remember his show at the Hirschhorn. Read something about him, lots of bastards, he screwed his way among the British aristos.”
“You like his work?”
“I think the Cremnitz gives his work a distinctive tone.”
“Yes, but do you like his work…. Ah, do you think it is any good?”
“I respect it. Like it? on my wall? Ah, no…. well … have to look at more to really decide, but there is no way I’ll ever get anything of his, is there?”
She examines a small tube of yellow.
“He is dead now though.”
“Oh, is he? See this Fred, Indian Yellow, they call it. Made of cow piss.”
“Looks small.”
“Yeah, 35 ml a little more than an ounce, but I paint small, Windsor and Newton thirty fives will do fine.”
We go on browsing among the different brands of paint, displayed in the jumble of ancient wooden furniture.
“Are you still teaching out at the P.U. Arts Center?”
“Yes, Frank Vasari gave me a year’s extension on my contract and an additional course.”
“That should keep you afloat.”
“Not at these prices!”
“Have him give you a show and sell a few works.”
“Yeah, right… ‘Say Frank, I need some extra dough, so how about it’?”
“Stranger things happen every day.”
“You know, teaching that freshman painting course got me back into it.”
“Inspired by your students!”
“Yeah, kind of, you know, watching them mixing and experimenting with color.”
“What do you have them do?”
“Ah, a color restriction for instance, see what you can get by using only mixtures of red and black.”
“As in painting a landscape or a figure?”
“Or an abstract. I watch forms come and go, as they paint and scrape.”
“In oils or acrylic?”
“Both, anything they want really, but I encourage oils, the old way, with palette brush and knife.”
“Don’t they think its outdated?”
“Some do, but it’s not a big deal.”
“What interests you so about the process?”
“Well, it’s seeing stuff appear and disappear…. makes me think of the supernatural.”
“Why?”
“Well, Leonardo compared painting to looking at stains on walls and finding figures in them. Presences which are there and not there!”
“Illusion!”
“Yes partly, but also color and form. That’s why I need to look closely at what he has in stock.”
“Why not just buy online?”
“That works when I know exactly what I want.”
“It’s cheaper, isn’t it?”
“Sure, but this is exploratory. I don’t trust the colors represented on a screen.”
“Your color vision is subtler than mine.”
“Experience can help with acuity, Fred.”
“What about that printed on the outside of the tubes?”
“If I ask, Tenniel will let me open a tube of Windsor and Newton and test it.”
“Really?”
“Sure, just squeeze out a little of the color and a little white. Then smear them together with a palette knife on white paper and see the range of tones.”
“Smear it?”
“Right, like spreading butter.”
“Seems costly for Tenniel?”
“I guess that is part of what you pay for here.”
“Old fashioned personal service.”
“Some-times I get a deal on previously opened tubes.”
“What an idea!”
Diasy wanders down the aisle and disappears in the direction of the cat’s bounding escape from our intrusion.
I find Daisy in the back room embracing a young red bearded man with floppy reddish-brown hair. We are a step down from the display area. A a faded threadbare Bokhara rugcovers the cement floor. Some of the rose ground still glows along the far edge.
We stand before of a big flat file under a broad frosted glass skylight. Here Tenniel stocks various grades of drawing paper, news print, textured acid free papers, parchment and Ingres paper, 16″ × 20″ sheets of Arches water color papers, and much else. Broad rolls of linen and cotton canvases are mounted on one wall.
The Beard turns around.
“Fred, ah, hi, ah, I’m Boyd, remember?”
“Of course, Boyd.”
Boyd turns away to open a drawer, but Daisy looks at me.
“Boyd is working here again. Isn’t it great?”
Boyd keeps his eyes on the drawer he just opened.
“Yeah, I kind of grew up here when I left high school.”
“I seem to remember you were here.”
“Fred, Boyd has reconciled with Lark.”
He turns from the open flat file, glances at me and then keeps his eyes down.
“Right, I have been staying at Mom’s place. Hanging out with her and Augie, and all.”
Daisy touches his shoulder with the palm of her hand.
“Its okay, Daisy. I am not going to burn you!”
“Aha, but we were pretty hot a while ago!”
“That was then. You know, stuff happened. Then I got to know Albrecht.”
“How is Albrecht, by the way.”
“Ah, we aren’t talking. He said I betrayed him and …”
Boyd stammers and turns back to the open drawer while Daisy fills in for him.
“It is pretty ugly, Fred. He has been really mean. I tell you, that guy is such a fanatic!”
Boyd recovers but doesn’t turn to me.
“Well, I was telling her all about it, just now. Like how we broke up, and all.”
Dinah jumps up into the open drawer and Boyd lifts her out and holds her looking back over his shoulder with two front paws gripping.
“Boyd, I want to look at paint, okay?”
“Oh, sure.”
We walk back to the shelves of Windsor and Newton. The cat wriggles free and jumps down to the carpet.
“Boyd, are you still seeing Maria?”
“Yeah, once and a while.”
“So, you guys are good?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Boyd picks up a stack of boxes full of colors and takes them to the back where Daisy starts her selection with an assortment of reds, and blues.
“Okay, I’ll take some of these high cadmiums.”
Boyd brings over a sheet of plate glass and a palette knife for Daisy to check the tonal ranges.
I walk to the front of the shop to look further at the displays. Dinah blocks the isle ahead with the long fine hair of her tail brushing the air in S shapes. Her thick gray fur, the color of house dust, is ruffled around her neck like a small flat Elizabethan collar.
She makes way for me, turning towards the back.
Brilliant orange of the pignut hickories across the street fills the bow window. A flock of starlings fly in to perch as the leaves float down.
When Daisy has made her choices, she calls Dinah as she walks towards me. She bends down. Dinah faces us with narrowed oblong pupils.
“Is this the same cat as before Boyd?”
“No, this is her daughter I think.”
“Her color is what you get from mixing all your paints together.”
Boyd hands Daisy a well filled paper shopping bag.”
“With plenty of white for her gray.”
Dinah turns and runs off again and flattens herself to hide under a bureau. Boyd looks up.
“That’s the opposite of additive color.”
“It is?”
“He’s right Fred, the spectrum produces sunlight when all the colors are mixed together, not gray.”
