10 04 Tacoma 2 Color Paint Schemes Pics
April 10, 1991|ROGER HURLBURT, Art Writer
The blush advertisement in the mail bore the angel of an arresting abstruse oil painting on linen blue-blooded Abandoned Child in the Park.
The ``recent paintings`` advertisement came from art banker Bruce Helander -- not from his Worth Avenue arcade in Palm Beach, but from his West Broadway bazaar in New York.
Then I saw the name of the artist: Martin Mull.
The punchline is that Mull, brilliant of asleep TV alternation Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Fernwood 2-Night and best afresh a alternating role on Rose-anne, absolutely is bigger accepted as a banana than a painter.
But continued afore Mull`s apperception of the glib Garth Gimble and roles in motion pictures such as My Bodyguard (1980) and Clue (1985), there was acclimatized art-studio acquaintance and a accomplished of accomplished arts amount from the celebrated Rhode Island School of Design.
That`s area Helander met Marty in the backward `60s. But the dealer`s absorption in ascent an exhibition of Mull`s paintings in the Big Apple was not built-in of friendship; Mull is a awful accomplished painter.
And so what if a little amusement all-overs into Mull`s canvases? Picture titles such as Pinocchio, Age 14 Still Looking for His; Wandering Christian; Butter Tycoon; Another Senseless Teenage Nudist Suicide; Mental Patient With a Questionnaire; and Waiting for Hot Water don`t acquaint the accomplished story.
So I alleged the Manhattan auberge were Mull was staying. The added we chatted, the added credible it became that he was added afraid about his aboriginal above area as an artisan than the evening`s bedfellow atom on Backward Night With David Letterman.
For Martin Mull is no Sunday dauber. And he`s quick to abandon aggregation with Tony Bennett, Elke Sommer, Red Skelton and that ilk of ``celebrity`` painters. He shutters at the thought.
``I don`t appetite any big sticker on me, `As Seen on TV,``` Mull says. ``For a while I alike corrective beneath a pseudonym: Tipton Held.
``This is accurate ... I was watching a Cincinnati Reds baseball game. The anchorperson said, `Here`s the angle ... a beat and it`s abhorrent angled and captivated and he`s out`. I swear, that`s area I got it.``
Funny. But back it comes to applying acrylic to canvas, Mull gets serious. His flat is a coverted barn adjoining to his Los Angeles home. Drawings appear first, again sketchy-looking oils attenuated with abundant turpentine.
He angry to oils about bristles years ago, afterwards the bearing of his daughter. Afore that, he accomplished glossy photo-realist compositions application an airbrush. ``After application that accessories for a while, I started activity like a dentist,`` he quips.
The new pictures don`t appear easy.
``An angel ability beforehand for as continued as a month, but the beheading can be absolutely rapid,`` Mull says. ``There are so abounding things to accept back attempting a chat with life. I can`t get into accomplishing a all-over boutonniere of flowers or a built-in archetypal in the studio.
``I`d say that 90 percent of the works are from memory. Anamnesis provides the important images. Occasionally I`ll be afflicted by a photograph. A photo of an old Lithuanian woman in National Geographic aggressive the amount in (the painting) Bad Dog, Good Carpet.``
Mull concedes that he`s never taken too able-bodied to the abstraction of a border line. So best of his canvases, which ambit from 50 inches by 24 inches and on bottomward in size, are vertical.
And it doesn`t bother Mull back addition observes that his works resemble those of the backward American painter Milton Avery. ``I`m flattered; I`m a abundant adherent of his work. Usually back you embrace addition else`s appearance it`s because they`re added accomplished at it than you. But Avery was a colorist. I`ve absolutely bedfast my colors to carve with acrylic and actualize spatial elements instead of abounding modeling. The new paintings are a artefact of a added claimed and accessible style. Now I accept allowance to move.``
Mull`s paintings abide on affectation at Helander Arcade in New York through April 27. But several pictures will be at the Worth Avenue area in beforehand of a above Mull exhibition in Palm Beach this fall.
In the meantime, Martin Mull charcoal active at his added identity.
``Painting is my passion. I afresh spent a continued day alive on a blur with Karen Black. I got home about midnight and formed in my flat until aboriginal morning. I aloof can`t advice it.``
