barks paintings

Donald D. Ault donaldault at pop.net
Tue Dec 11 13:32:15 CET 2001


A message:

> From: HorizonHse at aol.com
> Date:   Mon, 10 Dec 2001 02:20:24 EST

refers to a Barks painting:

4. "Scrooge Smokewriting Dollar Signs", 1997, unpublished.

Here's a transcription of the interview comments made by Barks about this
painting order before he had completed it. The interview was conducted by my
wife Lynda and me (and recorded on audio and video) on June 14, 1997. I
never knew whether or not he did, in fact, complete the painting. Apparently
he did. I would love to see it in some form.

Here's the quotation from Barks:

I have an order from some German to paint a picture of one of the old comic
book covers. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do a good job on it.
Because as I've grown older my hand is shaky, and my eyesight is getting so
bad from macular degeneration, that I can't focus on things, so that
painting a picture now I have to paint so close to it and have plenty of
rest for my hand, and to paint all that stuff with a limp little water color
brush-it's a very fine quality of sable hair, but it is limp. I don't know
whether I'm going to be able to do it, but I will try to get this painting
done, and that I believe will be the last one I ever do-painting. But these
colored pencils, I can do those because you have to bear down so hard on
those pencils to get the pigment to come off on the paper that the shaking
is all taken care of because it's just ground into the surface of the paper
there where it can't shake.

It [the painting] was the one of where Uncle Scrooge had a blanket and he
had a little fire and was sending up smoke signals of dollar signs. And this
guy wanted something added-it was a helicopter with Flintheart Glomgold in
it. I can't imagine what that purpose was, but something this guy imagines
is worth a lot of money.

End of Barks quotation.

This will be included in my edited chronological collection of Barks
interviews entitled "Carl Barks: Conversations," to be published by the
University Press of Mississippi.

Donald Ault
Professor of English
University of Florida
http://www.nwe.ufl.edu/~donault/





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