With A Little Help From My Friend

With A Little Help From My Friend

14" x 20"

Acrylic Painting

London, Ontario

2008

Jim Kogelheide

In the spring of 2008, I was nearing the completion of a seven month long art workshop that would soon see me creating my first Youtube animation film.

During these workshops, I took a lot of photos.  There were photos of the children working on their paintings.  There were group photos of the students displaying their finished canvas paintings.  And there was this photo…

At the beginning of each class, I had the students put on painting shirts so that they didn’t get their school uniforms dirty.  These two guys were having a bit of game helping each other get their buttons done up properly.  It was a really funny scene and I’m glad that I was able to reach for my camera in time to capture this image.

Shortly after this workshop was complete, I was looking at all the photos and I kept returning to this one.  It always made me smile!  I felt the sudden need to use this photograph to create a painting… and soon another canvas was being laid out and paints were being mixed together.

Creating images is always a learning experience for me.  I’m constantly looking for unique ways to create textures and for this painting, I had an interesting idea – I was going to create two paintings in one!

Since my art program saw the students creating an image of the Earth, moon and sun, I thought that it would be an interesting challenge to also use that design in this painting.

I used the Earth, moon and sun images as guidelines for my paints.  The Earth was created as a simple circle and when I was painting the two boys my brush strokes followed a circular pattern… in this part of the painting. The sun had lines radiating outwards – like the spokes of a bike – and in this part of the painting, my brush strokes followed these radiating guidelines.

When you look at the colour painting ‘Earth and Moon and Sun’ you will see wavy purple coloured rings around the sun.  In the painting of the two boys, these wavy lines were also used as guidelines to determine where my brushstrokes would be and what direction they would travel in.

I decided to eliminate the counters and cupboards that are a part of the background of the original photograph and I didn’t paint the glasses worn by one of the students.  I felt that this one small detail would be too difficult to incorporate into the textures that I was creating.

Once this painting was completed, I took it to Matthew’s Hall Private School to show to the principal and teachers.  They absolutely loved it.  I thought that I would be bringing this painting home with me, after this brief ‘show and tell’ but I was wrong.  The principal insisted on keeping it for a short while so that she could show the parents of the two boys who were in the painting.

Later that day, the principal called me to tell me that one of the parents needed to know if I would sell her the painting.  I was very honoured to have received such a wonderful compliment.  Up until that point in time, I had not even thought about what I would do with the painting once it had been completed.

I suggested a fair price and the mother of one of the young students immediately agreed to purchase this painting.

From time to time, I imagine this mother looking at this painting and then looking at her son, who is seven years older by now and thinking wonderful thoughts as she reflects on how much her little boy has grown up!  I’m sure that this mother will enjoy this painting for many more years to come.

Jim Kogelheide

2015

PS – As many of you have suspected, the title for this painting was inspired by the Beatles song ‘With A Little HelpFrom My Friends’!