{"id":2367,"date":"2021-09-04T19:11:43","date_gmt":"2021-09-04T19:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/?page_id=2367"},"modified":"2026-04-07T01:08:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T01:08:02","slug":"new-art-for-les","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/true-life\/1985-1989\/new-art-for-les\/","title":{"rendered":"New Art for Les"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

In the summer of 1985, I took a job managing the PediCab business that I’d ridden for in the previous summer.<\/strong> The owner I’d become good friends with had sold the business, and the new owner gave me the job, wanting to get her summer season off to a good start with at least one familiar and experienced person on the team.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

One of the PediCab cyclists we hired was an artist named Les. He was in his twenties, lightly bearded, skinny, and had a lethargic cadence in his speech and movement. In fact, he seemed to be the slowest, least-affected cat that I’d ever met in my life. I wondered if he’d discovered some form of inner peace, or maybe it was just something behavioural or even neurological. In any case, he was a friendly, laid-back guy with what seemed to be a happy relationship with the universe. Easy-going, carefree people always fascinated me, because I’d hardly ever felt carefree in my life.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I became friendly with Les after he showed me some illustrations that he’d had published in the Vancouver Community Arts Council newsletter. He encouraged me to keep drawing in my sketchbook, a practice my twelth-grade art teacher had instilled in me. I considered Les to be a published artist and I appreciated his suggestions.\u00a0I liked how he talked about art and illustration. He had a slightly offbeat, outsider quality that appealed to me. He had his own take on the world around him.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Now in his mid-twenties, Les had already completed his post-secondary education in Alberta. It was not lost on me that his Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts had resulted in a six dollar an hour summer job driving pedicabs. I kept hearing my Dad’s voice in my head, bitterly sniping “a B.A. means Bugger All”. Dad was smart but didn’t trust academia (third on his scale of mistrust, after religion and politics).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I assumed that Les was relatively poor most of the time, but none of that changed my feelings about his drawing ability and his interesting outlook of life. He spoke slowly about the meanings of things and about his ideals of what art should mean and be. I’d never known anyone who talked like that before and it was all rather serious and fascinating to me.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Artistically, Les would briefly become a mentor of the visual arts to me. Having been out of high school for a little over a year myself, the art teachers I’d known seemed to be in my past. I felt like I had nobody to give me feedback on drawing, and I really needed some advice and encouragement. Maybe it made Les feel good to have someone asking him for advice too.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Once, as Les flipped through my sketchbook looking at my scribbly sketches of people’s heads, boats moored in the harbour, and various decrepit door frames, he stopped on a densely-hatched image of a sagging wooden stairway. I remembered it from a building near the Granville Island Public Market – I could still see the peeling green paint and almost smell the dry rot in the old grey wood. I loved old derelict places tucked off in obscure corners. Apparently so did Les, because he asked to photocopy it and submit it to the next Community Arts Council newsletter. I was amazed! I was being published!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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