“Montgomery Hill” Painting

I finished my painting “Montgomery Hill” today, prints and cards available at rudy.imagekind.com. The terrified humans are oddly less real than the Saucerians from the stars. Come to think of it, the Saucerians are stars!

My friend and neighbor Gunnar showed up and watched me finish. He took a couple of pictures of me, and later we went biking.

I like painting a lot, it gets the other part of my brain working. I think of writing differently now that I paint. If something’s not right, you just paint it over and do it again.

Last night I had dinner with Oliver Harris, the Burroughs scholar. It was fun hanging out with him, a civilized, knowledgeable Englishman (although he takes exception to this description). He’s in the area to root through the Ginsberg archive at Stanford, looking at manuscripts that Bill mailed Allen.

“One final box had escaped previous scrutiny. As the Scholar slid it out from under the lowest of steel shelves, he noticed that it had been sitting in a viscid pool of clear fluid. A ripple passed across the congelation and a small tentacle formed. Moving with savage speed, the tendril wrapped around the Scholar’s ankle, dragging him closer to the Last Box. Slowly the folded-over cardboard edges unfolded to reveal—” Maybe a giant eye. Or the Muse…

He’s organizing a conference in Paris next summer in honor of the 50th anniversery of the publication of Naked Lunch by the Olympia Press…I’ll post more info when it’s available.

When I got home, oh joy, my Haoda adapter ring was here, meaning that I can now attach my old green 50 mm Summicron Leica R lens to my new digital Canon—at the cost of difficult focusing and slightly flaky exposure metering—so I stayed up late tinkering and reading camera geek posts on the web.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 11:36 pm and is filed under Rudy's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to ““Montgomery Hill” Painting”

Gamma Says:
May 28th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
wow as yu well gnosis Zappanale is after X-day (July 5th) – Napoleon is there & please tell anyone ARF be4 that in July in Paris (France) 4th is the third internatinal conference of Esamplastic Zappology – and they want me there to talk about poodles in the paintings of Jack Parsons – ????

is this real?

love yu & thanx fer all yur good work & please send me some waves

G
Gamma Says:
May 28th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Gunnar looks like a nice guy Oliver has a nice hat Phoenix is in Arizona?
the arid zone?
Matt Says:
May 28th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I love the border or aura you put around the trees and the other creatures in the painting, especially that limb in the immediate foreground. I’m glad you posted that pic that shows the side of the canvas painted. I dig the effect and the implications it has towards the subject matter you discuss here.
Steve H Says:
May 30th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Rudy, you used to develop pictures too? You never get the smell of Dektol outta your nose. I had to climb to my roof and put a tarp over the bathroom skylight to make it dark enough.

Here’s more on your tale about the Burroughs Scholar:

Slowly the folded-over cardboard edges unfolded to reveal— Burroughs’ face growing in a pan. It opens an eye and growls hoarsely “It’s about time, and you’d better have brought me a taste.”

The Scholar recoiled in mingled horror/delight. “Hey, nice hat,” muttered the Face of Burroughs. “Did you change your look again—ph, you’re not Alan. Bollocks. How long have I—oh bollocks.” The tentacle hastily shut the box and tried to look nonchalant, which is quite a trick for a tentacle.

Shaking his ankle, which was quite damp, the Scholar thought hard for several minutes before knocking on the box.

“Twenty-oh-eight,” he stage-whispered. “Keep silent and I’ll get you out of here,” he went on, mentally comparing the width of the slimy box to his expensive leather briefcase.

—excerpt from “Burroughs – A Boxed Set”