Serendipitous Unintended Consequences - Wood Sales

Sunrise, With a Boat Between Headlands c. 1840.

This painting required  an entire tube of white paint!!

A particularly popular trope at the present moment is that, whatever action that we might take to improve our common lot, “unintended consequences” will ever lurk beyond the visible ‘event horizon,’ so to speak, eventualities which, could we but see them, would strongly argue against our action. Unfortunately, this now viral idea, this meme, serves as a frequent excuse to permit those who ought to engage with others in concerted efforts at common improvement to avoid doing so.

Nothing could be more absurd. Without action, understanding is at best akin to a band-aid or a balm. Thus, whatever stands in the way of our attempting to better things is to be rejected, for the most part, rather than supported.

Our good fortune to connect with KickStarter and embark on the Epic Painting Project has already illustrated this contention repeatedly. Most recently, just yesterday, an offshoot of our work, not only unforeseen but possibly also unforeseeable, brought money, recognition, and networking potential to us.

As one might expect, this happy, yet unexpected, development did intersect with an absolutely intended result of our endeavor. To wit, my sweet spouse and I have long been collecting wood oddities with significant aesthetic impact but little or no clear ‘market value.’ A clear purpose of our pursuing KickStarter assistance was to show the powerful potential of these otherwise pack-rattish tendencies.



 Having now prepared sixty-nine panels for use, of which I have completed fifty four and begun five others, I am now officially on-track once more to fulfill my promise of ninety paintings in ninety days. Moreover, again and again, both Jimbo and I have marveled at how seamlessly the lines and form of the found-panels have complemented my renderings of Turner’s compositions.

Fishing Boat in a Mist, c. 1828

In the hurly-burly of living so close to multiple natural sources of such water-sculpted pieces, inevitably we have continued to collect additional of our stumbled-upon ‘canvases.’ Sometimes, these procuring expeditions discover an article already made-to-order. More frequently, we have to clip or cut or somehow shift the shape to match the necessities of Turner’s consistently-squared sinuosity, as in the cases on display today, Sunrise , Fishing Boat in a Mist, & Entrance of the Meuse .

Entrance of the Meuse, exh. 1819

We certainly never anticipated that my work would lead us to find customers for these natural ‘canvases’ themselves. Yet this is precisely what has transpired, out of the blue, as it were.

Both silly Jimbo and I have placed some of our work—photographs of his and epoxy-abstracts of mine—in a recent Asheville grassroots art show. Of course, in conversing with those who attended the opening, we both promoted aspects of the ‘E.P.P.,’ which has led to some e-mails back and forth with local artists.

One of these, Beth Topper, had actually more recently relocated here to the mountains—following graduation from the Savannah College of Art and Design—than had we. And, miracle-of-miracles, some of her work on display at the show in downtown Asheville also deployed found wood as a medium to present her art.

Once she had linked to ‘E.P.P.,’ she told us both how she coveted the gorgeous wood that we were repurposing so artistically. We didn’t need an engraved invitation; a visit was soon in the works, with the possibility of a friendly commercial exchange the upshot.

Jimbo as 2/3 of a demon!

She arrived with Noe from Central America, which was a bon-causa for me, who always relishes an opportunity for using the old Mother Tongue. They selected a couple hundred dollars worth of product,  without even delving into the hordes stored in different locations at our little casa. Beth didn’t want to spend   quite so much, so she and Jimbo whittled down the take until she had seventy-one dollars worth of material. She averred that she hated to pay retail and offered sixty-five bucks for this lot. Jimbo, who I can attest is a bit of a devil, countered that we’d take sixty-six. “I’m at least two thirds of a demon now and again,” he laughed.

They shook hands, we all hugged, and loaded up Beth’s Ford Escape without delay. Who knows if more such income is headed our way. Right now, we’re just happy to have exchanged wood for a ‘tank of gas’ or so. And, whatever the case may be, we’re certainly open to more of such ‘unintended consequences.’

Wood Panels for Sale

We have an outrageous quantity of wood panels, of all sorts of different sizes, available for sale at any level of price from $3 to $85, depending on shape, form, input, and marvelosity. These can be treated or untreated, gessoed or ungessoed. The upshot is, they will be one of a kind. Please contact me or Jimbo at spindoctorjimbo@gmail.com for more info.