Store Signs. Steinberg

A few days ago I was asked to paint two store signs. I never did anything like that before, and the store will sell great vintage stuff and art in downtown Marshall, NC: two reasons to say yes. Also, I love store signs and all kind of signs.

I started painting on Wednesday. More today. It's such a different physical experience than sitting at a table. You don't have a place where to rest your arms. Also, there is the sun. In my studio, I have shades to keep it out.
I was surprised of how natural it came to draw and paint on a large scale. I was worried about the lines, the creases of hands, bellies, necks, that they wouldn't show up. To my surprise, they do. A wall is a big sheet of paper, with more texture. In fact it's not a wall I am painting on, but wood. And paper is made of wood.




Saul Steinberg said great things about store signs in Reflections and Shadows, a book that I never get tired of reading. It's one of those books that I often consider keeping under my pillow, instead that on a shelf.

"Much of Magritte derives from sign painting, especially when he has to depict a human figure. The whole Surrealist school tries to show man as a cliché, the standard figure copied on signs from the fashion journals of the day."

Steinberg considered himself a writer who drew instead of writing. I love that. I love the way he did not write what he did not write.

Steinber wrote letters though. There is a great volume of letters to Aldo Buzzi, Lettere a Aldo Buzzi 1945-1999, published in Italy by Adelphi.