Hey, friends. Tim Jones here. You may know me as a humor writer. But now that I’ve mastered that field (unless you ask my children), I’ve decided to embark on a new creative journey – life as an artist. I have a good feeling about this (even if my wife does not).

I love my wife, Michele. She’s a very smart, incredibly talented artist. Even her name sounds like an artist: Michele Rushworth. We can be competitive in some ways, but the truth is, our talents tend to lie in totally different arenas. For example, she can make incredibly tasty, nutritious meals, and I …. cannot. On the other hand, there’s not a sport you can name at which my wife can defeat me. That’s because she has about as much interest in learning how to play, say, pickleball, as our cat Zippy has in learning about the intricacies of cryptocurrency.

But there’s one area where, if I’m being honest, I must grudgingly admit my wife has the edge – anything to do with art. She went to art school. I, on the other hand, graduated from a liberal arts program with a degree in Communications – which, upon my graduation, opened up a universe of exciting possible entry level job opportunities – mainly in the food services industry.

For the past 25+ years, Michele has painted incredible, lifelike portraits of judges, university presidents, orchestra conductors, military generals, philanthropists, and snotty rich children posed next to their prissy Irish Wolfhound named Prince Tuckahoe.

If you’re curious about how talented a portrait artist my wife is, check out some of her portraits here. (And no, those aren’t photographs. Those are oil paintings.) But her real passion is painting landscapes of lakes, coastal areas, flowers, mountains, and birds – in other words, chick stuff. See what I mean here. I’m not one to toot my own horn, but I recently found out that I am the co-owner of the largest private collection of original Michele Rushworth artwork in the world.

Watching Michele create her masterpieces has inspired me to explore my own latent artistic potential. I retired a couple years ago from a career in sales and marketing, so I have more time on my hands lately. I  believe there’s room for more than one artist in this house. So, I put down my writing pen, picked up the paintbrush, and am now well on my way to challenging my wife for household artistic supremacy.

I’ve only been at it a couple months – three, if you count my color-by-numbers coloring books initiation. I recently completed a painting of a horse prancing around in a field with a red barn in the background. When I showed it to a complete stranger for their reaction, they had no idea what it was, thinking that it might be an octopus or perhaps a school bus or maybe a mutant platypus, with a red barn in the background. On a positive note, I appear to have totally mastered how to paint a red barn.

Lately I’ve seen a marked improvement in my technique. Within less than three months, I had already progressed from finger painting to drawing with crayons, then colored pencils, and now I’m using actual paintbrushes – just like da Vinci used to paint the Mona Lisa. Check out the side-by-side comparison of da Vinci’s masterpiece vs. my own below. In case you’re uncertain, mine is the painting on the right.

Left: The Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci. Right: My own interpretation of this subject. I felt she needed a party hat and a bowl of popcorn, to make her feel happier. Okay, so I took some artistic license. Still, I think I nailed it.

Oh sure, my technique is a bit primitive, but I’m still in the early stages of my artistic renaissance. Eventually, I anticipate it will be difficult to tell the difference between an original Rushworth painting and an original Jones – assuming you’re drunk, can’t find your glasses, or are a dog.

But I have one thing going for me that my wife doesn’t have. I obtained a graduate degree in marketing, not to mention having spent over a decade in advertising. So, I know a thing or two about how to promote my work and generate some buzz. I just came up with this brilliant promotion: With your first purchase of an original Jones artwork, I’ll give you a punch card. Buy ten Jones originals, get all ten circles on your card punched, and voilà, your eleventh painting is half price. That’s called marketing, buddy.

I thought briefly about trying to create a media stir like the famous graffiti street artist known as Banksy does. He’s built almost a cult following by creating bold, sometimes controversial, works of street art in secrecy without asking permission. I tried doing this last week, painting over several area stop signs with the edgy word “GO” where the word “STOP” used to appear. It was done extremely tastefully. Alas, I was unable to explain to the arresting officer that this was just artistic expression, protected by our Constitution.

One idea I had was to offer a free lifetime subscription to my View from the Bleachers column, to any customer who purchased one of my original paintings. But one kind person suggested that instead, perhaps the incentive should be that the purchaser could request to be permanently UNSUBSCRIBED from my column. If it will help sell my work, I’m open to that suggestion.

My wife’s landscape paintings typically sell for thousands of dollars. I might have to start out a little lower initially until I build up a following. I showed a buddy of mine some of my most recent paintings. He suggested I start at Five dollars – or Best Offer. Hmm. This could be a tougher nut to crack than I thought.

Left: My wife’s oil painting of lily pads. Right: My own interpretation of the same subject matter. At first blush, it’s easy to mistake my wife’s artwork as superior. But notice how she totally left out the frog in her image – a glaring oversight, if you ask me.

I have no idea whether my artistic gifts will ever rival those of my artist wife. But one thing’s for sure – she will never match my prices. I accept cash, check, Venmo, and Dairy Queen gift cards.

That’s the view from the bleachers. Perhaps I’m off base.

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