Cool People

At 98 years old, Duane Bryers' hands still have enough dexterity to paint. In his most recent work in progress, depicting a woman racing to the mailbox before a coming storm, he created the figure of the woman without reference to models or photographs, and he considers her to be among the best work that he has ever done.



I met the most interesting man yesterday during an assignment for a section that we have about "memories". All of the features are based on what people have done in the past and most are senior citizens who are not too mobile anymore. Usually it means that they are really neat people with fantastic stories, and we end up being asked to do copy work of handout photos that they have.
Duane Bryers was really interesting, if you Google his name you find a bunch of pinup girl art of a character he created in the 30's, Hilda. Calendars are still coming out of her. In 1942 he won a competition at the New York Museum of Modern art for war propaganda posters, and later also became famous for a comic strip and his paintings of the American west. When he was 5 he started walking on his hands and built his own 20 ft tall trapeze in the back yard and sold tickets to his circus at the age of 12. When he was in high school he decided to teach himself to pole vault with home made materials and went on to smash the Minnesota state record by 6 inches. This guy's stories go on and on. It inspires me to work on my portraiture because I would like to make a worthly picture of him. I'll have to return though, I'm afraid the portraits I have I don't like much, but I did get an interesting detail.