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“Just like a good relationship, your painting needs some distance.” As much as I’d like to attribute that statement to the inimitable Bob Ross, it was another tall, wavy-haired artist—Josh Barton—who said it. The occasion was Paint Nite St. Louis, a rapidly growing and increasingly popular way to spend an evening socializing, drinking, and honing one’s artistic skills.
Founded in Boston, Paint Nite has spread around the country. Barton owns the local franchise and spends several nights a week instructing novices in painting. I joined Barton and about 34 other would-be painters at The Block in the CWE on a recent Wednesday night to paint “Hummingbird Silhouette.” At each station waited a blank canvas, a plastic cup of water for dipping, a paper plate with dabs of paint, and 2 brushes. Perhaps the best advice of the night: “Keep your water cup separate from your drink cup.”
Barton, a St. Louis native by way of Chicago, has an MFA in metalsmithing from Washington University. He said that the art is “secondary,” and he prefers to work with adults in a relaxed, fun environment. Affable and patient, he first presented the finished product as a model: a nightscape with a moon in the upper-left-hand corner, fronds of grass front and center, and a delicate hummingbird hovering above a stalk of grass on the right—a fairly simple picture. Replicating that image, however, proved to be more difficult than we thought, and the final products were as different as the venues in which Paint Nite rotates.
In addition to The Block, Barton travels to several bars and restaurants, including Joyia Tapas in the Grove, McCormick & Schmick’s in West County, and Lola off Washington Avenue. With each location the patrons’ ages shift, but the gender demographic remains the same: 85-90% women (yes, single men in St. Louis, this should be on your radar for a new way to meet the opposite sex). Women near me that night exclaimed that they vowed to try something new in 2014, and social painting was a perfect activity toward that end. I also heard more than one person bemoan the fact that it was hard, that she wasn’t used to doing something she wasn’t good at. As a result, only a few people attempted the hummingbird, arguably the most difficult element (after her husband proclaimed that her bird-in-progress looked more like a cat, one woman gamely painted a striped cat squatting on the grass).
Participating restaurants offer discounts—at The Block, we enjoyed happy hour prices all night—and gain exposure. For Barton, the more visible his group, the better. We and our canvases were on display in The Block’s front windows, and dining room patrons had to pass through our stations on their way to the restrooms. One diner paused in front of my canvas (right) before silently moving on. I like to think that he was so impressed with my skills that words escaped him, but he may have noticed that my grass stalks had taken on a questionable abstraction incongruent with my representational moon.
As the night progressed, Barton encouraged us to drink more—everything, including paintings, look better through beer goggles—but he seemed genuinely embarrassed by the crowd’s collective giggling when he suggested that we “ use just the tip” when finessing our “sparkle-darkles.”
I’ve never been a fan of book clubs and pottery-painting parties make me itchy; painting in a restaurant, however, among friendly peers was an entirely pleasant way to spend an evening. So what if my bird was more portly Woody Woodpecker than sprightly hummingbird—I flexed some new cognitive muscles while noshing on rock shrimp flatbread and sipping generous pours of Pinot Noir.
Check out Paint Nite St. Louis’s Facebook page for upcoming events.
