“The Pinyon Jay ”
I guess it could have been any kind of bird or most anything else. This drawing is a Pinyon Jay because that happens to be the picture in the magazine that I opened several hours before daylight on the morning of October 6, 2006. My wife, Corinne, and I were visiting our daughter, Suzanne Crowley, and her family in Southlake, Texas.
In 1973, I had come to a fork in the road of my life. The choice was this: I could either continue my daytime job with The University of Texas System and doing paintings at night or open a new architectural office in Houston and give up painting. I chose opening the architectural office in Houston. Years later, as my architectural career began to wind down, Suzanne and our other daughters, Karen Duban and Bonnie Batton, had been pushing me to draw and paint again. I kept telling them that I didn't think I could do it again.
About a month before this visit to Suzanne’s home, I had closed down my architectural office. While deciding what to keep and what to throw away to close down the office, I came across my old sketch books. As I looked through them, page by page, on those sad and dreadful days of ending my architectural career, the first hint of that old feeling of the desire to draw again began to tingle in my gut.
In getting ready for the visit to Suzanne’s home, I didn’t mention it to anybody, but I put one of those old sketch books and an ink pen in my bags. Then in those early hours of October Sixth, 2006, I came to another fork in the road of my life. One road lead to the usual comfortable life of retirement and the other road lead to see if I could draw and paint again.
And now, two years later, I am going down that winding, bumpy and exciting road leading to the world of art, I am currently recuperating from having a booth in the Bayou City Art Festival in downtown Houston on October 18 th and 19 th. This art festival is now perhaps the largest in the United States. The Art Colony Association, that sponsors this event, discovered my story and used it to promote the festival. On the Wednesday before the festival, The Houston Chronicle published my story with pictures of my drawings. Channel 13 TV taped my story, drawings and paintings on the Friday before the festival and aired the segment several times a day before and during the festival.
People of all ages, from ten to eighty or more, came to my booth just to meet me and see my drawings and paintings. Some wanted their picture taken with me. Retired men wanted to tell me that they were inspired by me to do something with their lives. Little girls and boys that aspire to be artists, got their parents to bring them to the festival to meet me. It was an unexpected surprise that my story would affect so many people and in so many different positive ways.
So today, it seemed appropriate, to put that drawing of the Pinyon Jay, dated October 6, 2006, on Art and Tales by Acree. It isn’t a great drawing, it is not even a good drawing; however, it is priceless to me.
Cheers,
Acree
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