I gave two paintings to my father, and both got destroyed in the fights he had with his second wife, Dee-Dee. You can see the five pound ashtray on the coffee table that she knocked Vic’s eye out with. He loved wearing a back patch.

https://rosamondpress.com/2012/06/03/dirty-dee-dee-knocked-my-eye-out/

‘The Argument’ was  a masterpiece, inspired by Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’. I did this painting when I was seventeen. There are three figures in it, one male, and two females who are on this zig-zag trail facing in different directions with their mouth’s open. The robed man looks like my father, who sang with the Barbershop quartet. This represents the Soap Opera I grew up in. I should do a painting of this brownish photo. I think the Prescos color coordinated their living around this painting. Christine would not take up art until three years later. But by then all my real heavy art was destroyed and I was replaced by Happy Innocent & More Worthy Children. The other work got knocked off the fireplace mantle and got a hole punched in it by the fireplace thingy-wingy.

When I went to visit Vic in 1988, he showed me the broken window where the bullet ricocheted off of – into his back – where it is still lodged! Vic died in 1994. I wasn’t told so Vickie and Stacey could have more art that Sydney Morris shoveled at them.

I am trying to get back into my art, and am bringing back my old styles. I have been working on a portrait of Chris Wandel, and Stefan Eins.

Andy Warhol got shot! Stefan has his hand over Chris’s mouth to stop her from insulting his Art Buddies. Chris started listening to Hate Radio, and voted for Trump. I told her we have nothing in common anymore. I am going to insert image of ‘Muffled Scream’ in lower left hand corner. Chris is about to say something nasty about McGowan who stands six feet from each other.

“Skanky whore!”

McGowan and Eins dig Hermann Nitsch’s bloody work. Chris hates these artists who bait her for the Shock Value. She described a vagina with cockroaches crawling out of it. I am going to put pigtails on the woman in The Scream, and retitle it ‘The Art Critic’.

‘The Argument’ came alive at an art show. It got physical when Brooke McGowan tried to kiss Stefan. There was a tug-of-war. Chris splashed wine on Brooke, and, she splashed back. They should use pig’s blood next time with a blank canvas on the floor. Note the political argument Stefan put on the wall. This is Art Synchronicity.

Stefan and Chris were lovey-dovey until Stefan opened the box of rocks I gifted Chris with. An argument ensued. There are many zig-zag sides to every argument. No one sees eye to eye. Vic told when a woman realtor saw my work, she broke out in tears.

“This is how I grew up!” she said.

Jon Presco

Copyright 2017

https://rosamondpress.com/2015/10/29/this-is-art/

https://rosamondpress.com/2017/05/31/the-high-noon-blood-train/

The biggest mistake I ever made, was to move back to California from Boston in 1971. I did this after my mother told me my father had a very rare eye disease and was going blind – in weeks! As an artist, and a romantic, I thought it best my father see his only loyal creative son, before darkness descended upon him – forever!

In Boston, I had it made. I won my nine month case against the Mafia, had talked my black Christian-Muslim neighbors out of acquiring guns in order to fight for our building on Beacon Hill. I had several girlfriends. The Mayor of Boston shook my hand as he told me;
“It took guts to stand up to those people.”
I survived an attempt on my life. Hmmmm! Am I the real Dirty Hairy – Hippie?
Within weeks of being back in Oakland, I learned my stepmother, Dee-Dee, had knocked Vic’s eye out with a huge glass ashtray she hurled at his head. The eye disease – was a big lie! Were they drinking? Or, is mental illness to blame? Mental illness vs. shit-faced drunk! You decide! What does that look in Dee-Dee’s eye tell you?
Even though he is flat on his back in the hospital squinting out of his good eye, Victor has to tend to business. His deep velvet hypnotic voice was the most inportant aspect of his loan shark business. There were alway suckers on the line that the Captain was slowly reeling in, or, responding to the chum in the water. These folks had to be worked, made to feel like a member of the Captain’s family, a tactic he employed on his three young female workers that came to his home five days a week, where the Captain had a big pot of squid soup on the stove, this part of his ‘Perk System’. More about that later.
When I came back to Oakland, Vic and Dee-Dee took this hippie to lunch in San Francisco. I had a Christ-complex after cheating death.
Above is Rosemary on the lap of ‘Killer’ my father-in-law who Don Logan reminded me of in the movie ‘Sexy Beast’. Robby was always on edge. When his PTSD got bad, he went to a bar and picked a fight so he could kick the shit out of someone, knock them to the floor. He did this on a regular basis till he ran out of bars. I kept my visitations to my mother’s home in San Fernando Valley, to one visit a year, I always feeling like fresh meat when I walked into the door.
Twice that I know of, Robby jumped in a car with a his gun and went racing to confront Christine’s new boyfriend or husband, who did not have a clue how Robby fit in to ‘The Family’ he being six months younger then me. He – Rosemary’s Bodyguard – turned my mother into a pot-head. Where was Harry Callahan?
Peace -brother!
Sexy Beast was like a home movie. One never knew when the shit was going to hit the fan. This family was in the Art Business. That is a early Rosamond on the wall.
Eat your heart out Mrs. Eastwood. We never put on airs, or had to fake a scene like the one where you spy on your daughter, because nothing really happens at your house.
Jon Presco
Copyright 2012