Arty Farty (From Northwich Guardian)

Arty Farty

10:31am Thursday 4th March 2010

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I DID art in school. I hate to blow my own trumpet – nobody else will touch it – but my chalk drawing of a wine bottle and grapes should be in the Tate National Gallery, if for no other reason than I included both blue and green grapes and the label on the bottle was spelled correctly in French.

The image of a bottle is now ingrained on my brain. That’s my excuse. If everybody who ever painted were to have their work exhibited then no gallery would be big enough. Stood end to end the pictures would go round the world. (I made that up, but it might be true). Most masterpieces tend to be battles but to paint them you have to be able to draw horses and horses legs are impossible to get right. Mine always appear to be disfigured. I can’t do cats either but I’m brilliant at stick insects.

I have never painted a naked lady; which is slightly different to painting a lady naked. It’s not because I didn’t want to but because I can’t do faces. Talking of faces, have you ever seen the Mona Lisa? Be honest, how many of us believe that our bottle and grapes is better art? I suspect that Leonardo Da Vinci gave someone a back hander so that he could get a good spot in the Louvre and make a fortune from postcards. It worked what ever he did.

I have just met a real artist who I can’t name for legal reasons but it rhymes with ‘Arty Farty’.

You can tell as soon as you meet him that he paints pictures and not lounges or front doors because he has multi colour shoes with not a speck of magnolia to be seen.

(I can’t do ceilings either. I go dizzy when I look up. That’s why I have fixed a mirror on mine. Now Ms Nomates feels sick.) Arty Farty has the look of an artist, hair all over the place in a windswept and interesting style like Billy Connolly and a beard that you just couldn’t buy. Yeah man, this guy is a really freaky way out talented man. (See, I’m speaking like him now) Those with an artistic bent are not like mere mortals. They are on a higher plain. I think it’s because they inhale so much white spirit. Arty also smokes a pipe.

Perhaps health and safety ought to have a word. The gifted do seem to see life in a different perspective. Arty Farty is very deep and he can draw faces, horses legs and fingers.

I don’t mean horses fingers, we all know they haven’t got any, even though we measure them in hands. And I don’t mean fish fingers either. He sees things in his head that most heads haven’t got room for. If we were all to take out common sense, logic, and all the other things that clog us up we could squeeze in more creation. Arty Farty has a bigger right side of his brain, as do I, which is why I can often be found walking in circles talking to myself.

Ms Nomates says I am creative. According to her I can tell a good story. Those with a heavier left side of the brain can work things out. They will have a theory as to why I walk in circles. Those sorts of clever people earn lots of money and collect paintings by Arty Farty and wish they could do the same as he.

I hope to persuade the Guardian to include some paintings he did of me.

Ms Nomates did ask me if I could explain to her the finer points of art, as I am something of an aficionado (she’s a Catholic). I said if she could spell it she doesn’t need my advice. ‘It is spelt I T’ she said. I hate it when she gets her smart mouth in gear.

I told her all there is to know about art. If you can walk round it, it’s a sculpture. If it’s on a wall it’s a painting. That kept her happy.