Minding my own business

I love creating whether it's painting, drawing, or making beautiful music on my sax. I am very much a lone wolf. I believe very much in keeping things very simple. I learned years ago how to be comfortably uncomfortable. I see all these crazy things going on around me, creating in general takes me away from all that, pretty much the same way some use drugs and believe that they've found peace in such an activity, most unfortunate. But that is their God given choice their own funeral, not mine. I have gotten quite a bit of work done during this quarantine although before all this I liked to go to a nearby river and paint all day long. I love the outdoors, especially near water.




When I was able to go to the old river, my thoughts stopped racing as much and I was able to calm down enough to paint a picture. My late brother Joe was my right-hand man who turned me on to oil. For years I wouldn't use oil because it stunk, my brother, Joe brought me up to speed on things oil. For one thing there's now an odorless oil, I never knew that before, I now use oil almost 100% of the time and I must say, the stuff is great, I'm impressed. When my brother passed away it left a huge hole in my heart as well as in my daily routine. I visited my brother probably 3 to4 times a week. I go over to his apartment and he would be watching Bob Ross (AKA) Mr. Happy Trees. Joe was fully equipped for whatever Bob threw out there, this was his routine every day. After Joe passed away my niece called me up one day and ask me to come over, it wasn’t
easy but I went anyway.



When I arrived, she escorted me to a room that held all my brothers’ paintings and his equipment, she turned to me with tears in her eyes and said, " I think he would've wanted you to have this. I instantly choked, not wanting her to see my eyes doing the water thing, I walked into another room. When I finally collected myself, I returned to the room still fighting back the tears. My eyes roamed over all Joes paintings and his equipment and finally settled on a small plastic box that held his oils, right beside of this box was his large, transparent pallet that was almost fully covered with all the colors he used right up to the hour he left his home and went into the hospital, never to return home again, even to this day, I’ve never used that pallet. When I look upon it I think of old Joe and become inspired. I sorely miss my brother Joe, we went through a lot of things together. Both of us experienced martial artist, and military men , We once fought off a small crew of four local thugs, back to back Joe was my rock, my partner in crime. Side by side Joe and I faced down some of life's greatest challenges together. May he rest in peace. I have a few of Joe's paintings on this sight. The proceeds from the sale of any of Joseph Hinton's work will go to his daughter and his grand son , I only keep enough to help maintain this website .Thanks for the read.