There is a print of a painting in our kitchen.

The same likeness is hanging in large form in my office at school.

There is another matted copy of the same image sitting a few feet from where I type these very words.

Let me go get it and put it in front of me for inspiration.  Hang on a minute.

The price tag is still on it.  How I ever got out of The Art Institute in Chicago by only paying 15 bucks for this thing is dumbfounding to me.  I’d of paid $75. So is the price of art, I suppose.

I really don’t know that much about the great artists, or the periods of art, or the major influences of the biggies.  Yes, I have been to many art museums. They fascinate me.  Art fascinates me.  On a visit to Minneapolis to see a true artist, Brett Favre, my dear wife, Carrie, and I went to the Walker Art Center.   This is a place that concentrates on modern art.  I found it fascinating. There was some stuff there made by Yoko Ono and I just did not get it.  I didn’t expect to.  Beatle fans have to stick together.

They do have a great outdoor exhibit at The Walker as well.  I think they call it a “Sculpture Garden”.  There is a big SPOON with a cherry sitting on it that gathers a great deal of attention.  I thought that was pretty neat.  The Walker Museum was not a waste of time.  If I had the time, and I was in Minneapolis, I would go back.  I really would.

Like I said,  I don’t know that much about the great artists, or the periods of art, or the major influences of the biggies.

I do, however, know my great artist.  I do know I depended on him on more days than not during my 11th grade English class, 5th period after lunch, and to me he was a biggie and he was…and still is… a major influence on me.

I don’t know much about the painter,  Edward Hopper.  In earnest, I am reluctant to find out too much in fear that I might find a reason to think ill of him.  That would be difficult to me and my system of beliefs.  Sometimes there are circumstances where we know too much for our own good.  I don’t want that to happen.

This is what I do know:  In 1942, the same year my parents were born, Edward Hopper completed a painting he called “Nighthawks”.

“Nighthawks” is a street view scene into a cafe that houses three customers and the gent behind the counter.  He is obviously tending to an order of one of his customers.  One customer has his back to us.  The other two are sitting looking not at each other, though they are looking forward to a degree.  It looks as those these two have a great deal on their minds.

This painting saved me.

In 1984 I was in an English class with a teacher I could not see eye to eye with if I was lying on the ground or standing on a step-ladder.  As a student,  I never walked into a class with the intention of giving any teacher a hard time.  My Dad was a teacher.  I understood this stuff.  What I was not prepared for was a teacher, a female person… that was totally satisfied with listening to the sound of her own voice without giving sincere care to the voices of the students around her.  Maybe she was scared.  Maybe she was dealing with a confidence problem.  Maybe…well, who knows?

In the back of our class Literature Book, there was period art to augment the significance of the day.  That is where I found Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”.

When I became unaccountable to the mess of the English class I was subjected to, instead of making a horses-butt of myself, which I was more than capable of, I turned to the back of our book and stared intently to the small rendition of Hopper’s masterpiece that had found its way into a text book in Southern Indiana when I needed it the most.

The original has a home…The Art Institute of Chicago.  The first time I visited there it was on loan.  This past February, our last visit to Chicago, it was on loan to another museum.  I think it was in France.  But…I have seen “Nighthawks” a couple times.  It is much larger than I ever imagined it would be.  The few inches by a few inches I dreamed about as I was looking at my 11th grade textbook was suddenly a masterpiece before me that measured in feet by feet.

I wept the first time I saw it.  If it was in front of me today, I would probably look for a crying towel.  And to think, in 1942, Edward Hopper was just sitting down to paint.

His painting speaks the rights.