Mike Guthrie(Artist)
Chapter 5
Mike Guthrie was an Artist nonpareil. He swept in from the yards of an epilogue in the Summer of 1976, there in the blot of time he forever changed the Bluegrass Tavern’s landscape. I met him personally at the age of 17 and thought to myself, what an artist, I immediately wanted to be an artist or painter, that's what kind of gravitational influence he had, and nothing was intentional. He and Joe could talk for hours, and I think, and I'm not certain, but he and Joe had an agreement that Mike could paint anything at the tavern and have an endless free flow of draft beer because I never saw him pay for one mug of beer.
Mike knew the pigments of colors and he was a gilded lector of color history too, he could exfoliate the difference between hues and shadows, as he once said, “colors exhibit their own story.” He dappled in something unique every day at Joe’s, he loved his mug of grog and that seem to open up his glorious mind. I would race to Joe’s from my duties at Nelson county high school just to catch Mike working on a project. He liked me, and he always took a break to talk to me, he was doing tedious lettering artwork one day and even that was sublime but he asked me to make up a short quote, and I obliged with, “Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.” He painted it with his unique calligraphy, and said, “Tim, you should become a poet.” I never told him the quote was from Ozzy Osborne, and I swear still to this day, they never knew. That plaque of the quote hung on the wall at Joe’s for years until some thief stole it, I always wanted that piece, just to remember my dearest friend, Mike.
Mike would entertain me for hours with endless art history and trivia, he immersed me with this fortuitous knowledge, Mike said that Art used to be an Olympic event; and the Spanish artist Francisco Goya and several other great painters went mad painting their artwork because they used paint that had lead and mercury in them and the fumes were very toxic and deadly, breathing in these paints causes you to go mad first then kills you, and cadmium yellow, cadmium red, and cadmium orange was used by all early painters and artists, and Goya became mad and went insane.
Mike’s eyes were bluer than a North Carolina skyline, I called him ole Paul Newman because no other two humans on earth had those deep blue eyes like them. Those blue orbs caught more sunlight and saw more magic than most will ever see in a lifetime. A rare syzygy indeed occurred when Mike was born, he alone was an incredible and aureate mentor to me, he was arcane and selcouth as artists go but as I sonder in skepticism and wallow in my pathetic onism, I’ll always remember my friend, Mike, when the mnesic of melancholy strikes me on some rainy day, I'll remember those rainy and snowy days at Joe’s when Mike was painting his magma opus, Secretariat, on the back wall, which now has been replaced by Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night by another incredible artist none other than Mike’s son Noah, is truly remarkable too. Mike Guthrie is a strong candidate for the most popular connection of the Bluegrass Tavern’s Hall of Fame, his artwork used to hang in Joe’s place like a haunting museum. Mike Guthrie, was a pleasure to write this “feelstora” and save me brush and palette on the other side.
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