Memory and Dream

Paddyjack

Paddyjack crouches by a dumpster in a shadowed alleyway. Light from a streetlight enters far enough from the roadway to play across his curious features: pointed chin, the wide spread of a thin-lipped mouth, nose like a goshawk’s beak, slanted deepset eyes the color of burnished gold and surrounded by shadows, long ears tapering back into fine points. In place of hair he has a tangle of leafy vines and twigs standing out every which way from under a battered three-cornered hat the color of an oak trunk.

His limbs are as thin as broomsticks, shoulders narrow, chest flat, hips almost nonexistent. His raggedy clothes hang from him as from a scarecrow, a crazy-quilt patchwork of mottled forest colors: sepias and Van Dyck’s brown, ochers, burnt sienna and a dozen shades of green. The rendering of his trousers, shirt and hat is festooned with mere daubs of paint that still manage to convey the notion of shells and buttons, thorny seeds and burrs, all patterned in a bewildering array.

The first impression is that he has the look of an animal, caught in the headlights of an automobile, or the sudden glare of a back porch light turned on at an unfamiliar sound. One thinks of a cat or, with those dark rings of shadow around his eyes, a raccoon. But upon closer scrutiny, the viewer can find no fear. He carries, instead, an air of both sly amusement and mental simplicity, an old-world humor utterly at odds with the urban decay of his more contemporary surroundings. And while he has the basic prerequisites of a human being in his appearance—one head, two limbs for walking, opposable thumbs, clothing—it quickly becomes obvious that he has originated from somewhere other than the world of his surroundings, from the pages of the Brothers Grimm, perhaps, by way of Arthur Rackham or Jean de Bosschere.

Paddyjack, 1974, oil on canvas, 10 X 14 inches. Private collection.