"Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish."—Mark TwainEddie Arning's painting Man with Great Fish reminds us of a favorite summer pastime.
Let's Go Fishing!
"Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish."
—Mark TwainEddie Arning's painting Man with Great Fish reminds us of a favorite summer pastime.
Institutionalized for most of his adult life, Eddie Arning was introduced to drawing in 1964 by a hospital worker who supplied him with materials. Arning's medium from 1964 to 1969 was Crayolas. In 1969, he switched to oil pastels, or "Cray-pas." Regardless of his media, Arning always worked in the same manner, covering the entire surface of the paper with dense strokes of color. He stopped drawing in 1974, a year after leaving his nursing home.
Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: For the National Museum of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990). The Mark Twain quotation appeared in Merle Johnson, ed. More Maxims of Mark (New York: privately printed, 1927).
Pictured: Eddie Arning, 1898–1993, Man with Great Fish, 1970, oil pastel, 22 x 31 7/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Sackton.