A couple of experiences in the last weeks have shown me that you can never be friendly OR unfriendly enough (although one should always err on the side of friendliness) when people approach you as you paint. A vast majority of people are polite and ask for permission to peek over your shoulder and usually have praise or questions . That is fantastic. A minority, though, either think you are a there for their entertainment only and therefore should shower pleasantries on them or , for some reason, you are bothering them. Children are a completely different matter and one should exercise a broader patience and be a little more thick-skinned for the sake of the few that "get it". When adults say something negative about your art when uninvited to do so, issues lie more within their problems than with our paintings. You SHALL be bothered sometimes, get used to it.
In Palm Springs, a bunch of teenagers that should know better fouled my mood with some nonsense about me being within limits of an indian reservation. That after ruining the evening air with clouds of dust after some dangerous SUV cartwheels. I was probably within limits but so what? I scratched the reservation off my list and painted this behind a shopping mall off Palm Canyon Av. To quote Horatius from his "Ars Poetica" :
Pictoribus atque poetis quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas. (It is the prerrogative of painters and poets to dare what they please).
And in Highland Park, some fully grown lady spared no expletives from the comfort of her SUV (what is with SUVs? ) when all she got from her dumb "That's prettyyy!" was a "Thank you" that wasn't enthusiastic enough to her ears. I smiled and finished mood unspoiled.
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