W. Persona clown oil of stock market crash owned by Lehman exec
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W. Persona clown oil of stock market crash owned by Lehman exec
About the Item
William Persona has had many labels in his lifetime – artist, circus clown, movie set designer, actor, mask and costume maker, newspaper reporter-photographer-illustrator and art teacher.
But like a true renaissance man, the 80-year old Kihei resident doesn’t fit simply into one category. That is, no one job identifies Persona, who now calls himself just a common retiree.
But after listening to him describe some of his assorted careers recently, I glimpsed a few of the traits of the grey-haired, stocky man who’s assumed these many identities.
For one thing he’s clearly industrious.
“I’ve always been willing to work hard” he said during a recent interview at his rambling one-story home in Maui Meadows.
Oil paintings seemed to be everywhere, stacked in corners and on tables and hung on walls – proof of only a portion of Persona’s prodigious productivity.
In total, Persona says he’s probably created about 4,000 oil paintings – churning them out at an average rate of 200 a year over the last 20 years.
Persona wandered around the living room as we talked.
When we discussed art, he plucked pictures off tables and chairs and handed them to me, making a point about the different painting styles he’s tried, from seascapes to portraits to caricatures.
“I don’t believe you get anything for free,” he said, when I asked why he’s had so many jobs.
“As a result, I’ve never been too proud to do any kind of work to make a living,” he said. “Anything to pay the rent. But whatever I did I thought I was going to be the greatest at it in the whole world.
“ Like I figured I was going to be the world’s best actor. And I’ve always loved art, so I thought I might be the next Picasso,” he said.
“I’m not proud of all the things I’ve done,” he said. “ But I’m not going to deny I did them. My wife Josefina tells me not to mention half of them, like factory worker, Chicago stockyard cleaner, bus boy, waiter, lunch counter man, sign painter and usher. But these were all facets of my life.”
One of the largest components of that life, Persona admits, has been his willingness to throw out an established way of living and pursue a new one.
“Change has never scared me. I’ve always been willing to take a certain amount of risks. I like trying new things,” he said.
Persona said his introduction to change came when he was still a teenager and was shipped away from his tranquil home in West Virginia to attend school at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.
His family wanted only the best training for the budding artist, who from a very early age loved to paint and draw. But leaving home was still upsetting.
Three months later Persona’s life was upset again when his father died and his mother moved suddenly to Hollywood and took Persona along.
Persona then enrolled in the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. That lasted only nine months before Persona dropped out of school on an impulse, got married and began to raise a family – even though he had no idea how he would earn a living.
Fortunately he was able to land a job as an artist for two newspapers, the weekly Hollywood Citizen News and daily Long Beach Telegram.
He also worked part-time in a wood mill. There he cut four fingers off his right hand one day in a mishap with a saw.
But that didn’t really slow him down in his various jobs, he said, “It just was a bit of a nuisance.” The biggest problem was learning to paint with his mangled hand – which he did quickly.
Shortly after that, his marriage on the rocks, Persona decided to see the world and shipped out to Australia on a tramp steamer.
“I’d always been intrigued by the romance of the Pacific,” he said. “So I took off. I didn’t have a coin on me when I got off the ship. So the first thing I did was walk up to an employment agency. They asked if I’d ever been a waiter. I lied and said yes and got a job at a real fancy restaurant. Of course I got fired right away because I got the orders mixed up.”
Undaunted, Persona said he marched into the offices of The Evening News, one of Australia’s biggest newspapers, showed off some of his art work and landed a job as an artist-illustrator.
- Dimensions:Height: 18.5 in (46.99 cm)Depth: 3 in (7.62 cm)
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:1960's
- Condition:Painting is in good condition frame has some minor losses.
- Seller Location:Palm Springs, CA
- Reference Number:1stDibs: U10031683501085
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