Barnes, incidentally, is a master of safety play or defensive pool, "punting" the cue ball around so that when it's your turn to shoot, you're hidden behind a wall of balls, a mile away from your object ball.Ĭhampions at Midnight | © René B. This is another large painting that posed challenges - balancing color and lighting and components, I brought together literally dozens of reference photos. Conrad, sitting against the "Absolutely No Gambling" sign on the back wall, owns the Blue Fox, and I disingenuously placed him in this painting hoping he'd pop for another pool oil he's bought a few. Barnes" playing 9-ball at the Blue Fox in Winchester, Virginia. The sign on the back wall, which isn't legible at low resolution, is a deco warning that "Absolutely No Gambling is Allowed." Because I took my reference photographs in a small enclosure, getting the perspective on the floor and table was a challenge.Īction at the Blue Fox | © René B. The background character is "Jaybird," a habitué of Breaktime Billiards in Front Royal, Virginia, who always hectored me to play for cash ("cheese," in pool parlance). I spliced her with an image of me (in the Stetson), and my old "Fortress America" pool table to complete the scene. This very small oil on panel was based on a single vintage photo of a solitary woman shooting behind her back. The dynamics of his posture and the shaved head appealed to me, as it was a pose Bellows might like. As my paintings progressed, I got more patient with background details, to which I'd simply allot sessions, rather than try to hurry through.Ī Dame Takes the Cheese While Jaybird Watches | © René B. The player posed for me at a "Super Seven" tournament in Baltimore Maryland. This is the earliest of my large pool oils. This is called Old School High Roll because everything in the painting is an antique,įrom the cylindrical Brunswick chalk to the old "Clay" balls, to the Gold Certificate. Doing this oil, I discovered the odd fact that Payne's grey mixed with white produces a close semblance of dollar-bill-green. The subject matter would measure about 8" wide on the front plane, yet has the feeling of both spaciousness and compression in the canvas' 40" width. If you were to approach a pool player and propose, say, a race to 10 for $20, and he responded with "How about a race to 10 for $200?" then you could say you'd been "high-rolled." So there are sharks, but sharks can be divided into pelagic and littoral sharks.
Old School High Roll is a very large oil on canvas, mounted on panel. Today, I'm turning the blog over to René, who will be telling the stories behind his own paintings: He also plays in local and regional billiards tournaments, and has painted a number of pieces depicting that very mathematical passion. René, an older brother, today works steadily as an artist, painting fine still lifes and landscapes. Though I am the only one in my family who made a career in art, I do in fact come from a family of artists.
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