The ART of Storytelling

hello my name is alan boatright

i am an artist i go by the name alan j

on my paintings i simply sign with a

letter a

because i feel like the paintings aren’t

really about me they’re more about

the subject so with that said uh when i

was

young eight years old i started painting

i started painting with

oil pastels colored pencils and i kept

doing it all my life

i never had a job that wasn’t art

related except for mowing lawns and pick

and night crawlers

outside of that it’s all been art

related although i never sold

any art as an artist until i was 56

years old

i started we bought a house here in

florida next to my in-law so we could

take care of them in their

latter years and i wanted to decorate it

with beachy stuff but i didn’t

want palm trees

i didn’t want pelicans flying i wanted

something really strange so i

decided that what i would do is paint

them myself so i started painting robots

lounging on the beach rusting

and it took off from there people always

ask me

why i paint robots and the answer to me

is kind of simple if i paint a robot

you can’t tell me if this is a boy or a

girl if he’s a republican a democrat

if he you can’t tell me anything about

him

what his race is anything so it removes

your ability to prejudge what might be

happening here

and most times it’s always robots in

this case there’s

some humans in here and i’ll tell you

why i chose those in just a minute

but i also number my paintings you’ll

notice there’s numbers on the paintings

and people ask me about that too almost

every show they’re like what’s with the

numbers well

the numbers at first were to help me

keep track of the order i did them in

because while i can remember really

stupid minutia

i can’t remember what painting number 52

was and i might have done it three weeks

ago

so but i can tell you the order i did

them in

one two three four five six seven all

the way up to 57.

so this one is painting number 42 and

sometimes that number plays a

intricate role in the painting but i

don’t

like my next painting is number 57 and i

don’t have a plan oh number

57 that’s 57 chevy they were mainly

turquoise and white in my mind so i’ll

paint a 57 chevy

doesn’t work that way i i tend to um

just roll with it and then it’s almost

like

it just flows out of me and it either

matches a number or it doesn’t but i

never let the number decide

so in this case i was going to paint uh

about the moon men not being the first

men on the moon we got buzz aldrin neil

armstrong

it’s apollo 11 mission

and uh 42nd painting and it starts out

as a series of jokes about

not being the first and there’s no

american icon about being the first any

more

important or memorable than when we

stood on the moon

nobody had stood on the moon and so

that’s a very big first so i spoofed

that

to get to the real point of this

painting and so

my paintings i tend to let the viewer

look at it

get it all wrong and then i like to go

in and clean it up

for them and i purposely put things in

there to distract them like cadillac

the cadillac emblem the real rivets the

real timex watch just to

take them totally out of the game of

really knowing what’s going on

so in this case

neil armstrong neil armstrong buzz

aldrin arrive

on the moon first men on the moon but

they find

that the robots have beat them to it and

they’ve taken a sample

well the robots arrived on the moon

moments earlier thinking they were the

first on the moon

and they found that these little green

men had arrived before them

and if you look here he’s got a sample

so then if you look at the footprints

where they’re standing you’ve got a lot

of footprints here

there’s here’s one that’s way bigger

than his foot

and here’s a faded one a little bit

older way bigger than this foot

and in the background this possibly is a

footprint

way bigger than all the feet so if

you’ve got buzz aldrin and his stick

reflected right here

in this part of the helmet who’s this

so they’re about to get sampled and

that’s where

the joke lies but the real story

lies in this number 42 in this logo

brooklyn dodgers

everybody knows that jackie robinson was

the first colored player

in major league baseball he broke what

they called the color line

and paved the way for uh black americans

to play baseball just like anybody else

but actually he wasn’t the first

if you go and take 42 and 42 and add

them together

this is just a way that i remember

things that equals 84.

in 1884 which was 63 years

before jackie robinson there was a guy

by the name of moses fleetwood walker

and now you know why i have the

fleetwood emblem there

he played 42 games in the major leagues

coincidentally

he batted 236 he caught without a glove

he was a catcher

he didn’t wear the breastplate either

he often took hits broke ribs broke

orbital bones but he hung in there and

he was tough

he um ended up playing just those 42

games and the problem was that up in the

audience were

slave owners it’s 1884 and they’re

looking out there going

what’s this guy doing well he’s batting

236. he’s doing great

um he’s catching without a glove

it’s great what’s he doing out there and

there was such confusion and

insults being hurled from the crowd and

that

the next year since he’s all broken up

and

not doing so well he’s he’s playing well

but

he’s a distraction so they say don’t

come back next year

now i made two thousand dollars that

year in 1884 that was a lot of money

but that was the end of moses fleetwood

walker

his baseball career so now let’s

talk about another person i’ve got

two astronauts i’ve got two robots i’ve

got two

army men so we can’t really just stop

with two

or one human we got to do one more so

let’s do rosa parks

on december 1st 1955

rosa parks was 42 years old

she sat down on a bus in montgomery

alabama

it was a segregated bus and she sat in

the front row of the colored section

when she uh

sat down there was one seat beside her

and then the

two seats across the aisle were taken

also by

people of color and it was raining and

three white people got on the bus and

the bus driver got up and he said you

three you’re going to have to move back

and he moved the sign the colored people

section sign he moved

it back and the other two people

complied got up and stood

but she says i’m not getting up and this

was the same bus driver that weeks

earlier

she had gotten on the front of the bus

because that’s where you paid she got on

and paid and then she looked and if

there’s any white people sitting in the

white section

you as a person of color are not allowed

to walk

back that way you got to get off the bus

go to the back door and come in the back

door

so she paid looked and he goes you got

to get back off

get in the back and so she stepped off

the bus he closed the door and drove off

left her standing in the rain

now the same bus driver has moved the

sign behind her

and has said move she refused she was

arrested

that started the montgomery bus strike

which then started the

freedom movement and she’s credited with

being the first to do so

but she wasn’t the first eleven years

earlier

it’s 1944.

we’re back to jackie robinson the

japanese had

bombed pearl harbor on december 7th 1941

and on january 6

1942 jackie robinson was drafted

into the army now

he was a educated uh person of color and

he was

able to with a little bit of a fight

took about two years

he became an officer he was a second

lieutenant

in the army at fort hood

in 1944 he got on a bus after

a doctor’s appointment for a uh ankle he

had

uh problems from sports in college with

his ankle

and he had it looked at and he got on

the bus and

he now this was a segregated bus

black and white could ride together

anywhere they wanted it was on a

military base

and the government was not they did not

have

unsegregated buses so he was able to sit

wherever he wanted

but a guy got on the bus and the bus

driver says you got to move to the back

and he’s he looked around and he thought

i got corporals privates sergeants

these are people i’m going to be leading

in battle when i get over to europe in a

few weeks

i’m on the head of a a tank outfit the

black panthers it happened to be

and um i’m going to lead them into

battle and i’m going to say come on and

they’re all

going to magically know now that they

can do what i say

but here in america right now this day

i have to go to the back of the bus like

a second class citizen

so he says i’m not going to do it

so the bus driver gave up drove on to

the end of the line

and when they got to the end of the line

he summoned the military police over and

they arrested jackie robinson

he went on trial for insubordination

he uh with the help of friends fellow

officers the naacp

he ended up getting all charges against

him dropped he was acquitted by a

all-white jury of nine men

and they dropped the charges but he was

out of the army he got an honorable

discharge and he was released from the

army

so now it’s november 1944 the war is

almost over and

within a few weeks it was over and

he couldn’t find work because everybody

came home and they’re all taking the

jobs

the last person is going to get a job is

a black man that raised a ruckus in the

army

so he decided to take

the advice of a friend and he went on to

try out for baseball

he made the team with the brooklyn

dodgers

he went on to play many many games for

him he became the highest paid player

in baseball history when he retired in

1961 he was nominated for the hall of

fame at the age of 42.

in 1962 he was actually inducted into

the hall of fame

in 1972 number 42 was retired from the

brooklyn dodgers

in 1997 the number 42 was retired

throughout all of baseball

so the next time you hear someone say

this is the first time this has happened

just know that it isn’t

the first even the bible says there’s

nothing new under the sun

in ecclesiastes 119

1-9 excuse me and

for more information on the paintings go

to iron ironplanetstudios.com

and read all you want