I heard a fascinating bit on the radio today about an Estonian beatnick turned Maine artist, Andrew Winter, and the sorry tale of his painting “Gulls at Monhegan”. He painted it in 1935, someone in Humbolt County, California ended up with it in 2003 but when she tried to auction it the Treasury Department sued, and won, on the ground that it was created and paid for during the Depression’s WPA program, the progenitor of Obama’s present day stimulus fun.
As I say, it was interesting, but what really piqued my interest was the old narrative NPR played by a WPA apologist explaining that “artists and writers, being of too sensitive a nature for hard manual work, have been put to work creating art”.
Well. Am I not sensitive? Do my hands not bleed when forced to handle a shovel? Am I not a writer (stay out of this, Walt). I want what Andy Winter got, and more of it. Digging around, I see that he painted a nice little ditty, “Apartment on St. Croix, 1937”. Heck, I’ll go to the Caribbean, if that’s where my services are needed. I stand ready to serve.

Chrissy's WPA cottage