Faces of Evil. Lois Gibson
he scorned. “There’s no way in the world you could paint that well. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You wouldn’t even know where to start.” Calmly, I persisted in my assertion that I could paint every bit as well as Vermeer and he grew so incredulous and insulting that he threw a dare at me that was intended to shut me up for good (and prove his superior knowledge).
“You think you can paint as well?” he demanded. “Okay, fine. I’ll take you to an art supply store, buy you whatever you need and you do a reproduction of one of the paintings in this book.”
So I did.
I spent hours in my apartment, painting a copy of “Girl With Pearl Eardrops and Turban.” While I painted, I listened to my tapes of George Harrison’s Everything Must Pass, Sly and the Family Stone and Cheap Thrills by Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company.
And I loved it. Loved every minute of it. And I realized that listening to music and painting was as close to bliss as I was ever likely to get in this life, that I loved doing it so much more than I had enjoyed going to discos, L.A. parties and all the rest of the Hollywood scene.
This is what I want to do, I decided. For the rest of my life.
The rape was never very far from my mind and I remembered well those terror-driven moments and my thoughts, when I’d despaired that I was going to die before I finished college. I made up my mind right then that I would find a way to go to college and major in art.
Eventually, I finished the painting and called up Mark to come and pass judgment.
He was astounded, incredulous.
Of course, he couldn’t just compliment my work and let it go. This was the 1970s and like many men he believed that most women should be at home keeping house and making babies. He kept saying things like, “Did you really paint that?”
As my cheeks began a slow burn, I said, “What do you think? That I had some guy come in here and paint it for me?”
And he said, “Maybe.”
I was furious, but it was only the beginning. He insisted that I paint in front of him so that he could be reassured that I had indeed done the work.
So he watched me and I painted, thinking, I will never see this ego-maniac jerk again EVER.
When he was satisfied that I had indeed done the work, he then demanded that I give him the painting.
“Are you kidding?” Now I was incredulous. “There’s no way I’m giving you this painting.”
“But I bought the art supplies,” he replied, as if that was all there was to it.
I didn’t know if he was ignorant that good replicas of Vermeer paintings could go for $6,000 to $8,000 on the open market or if he was that big of a jerk—that sixty-five dollars’ worth of art supplies was somehow an even trade for my talent and my labor.
I crossed my arms over my chest and stood in front of my picture. “I’m not giving you this painting,” I said.
Sputtering, near apoplectic, he left, slamming the door so hard that it rattled things on the walls.
As soon as he got home, he called and screamed at me for more than twenty minutes, because I wouldn’t give him that painting.
I set the receiver down on the bed and sat there, listening from a distance while he ranted and raved and screamed.
And I thought, I want a man like my daddy. A man who’s not afraid to work hard, get his hands dirty, stay the course and take care of his family.
While this jerk kept screaming, I contemplated the men I’d known in the Midwest. A real man, I thought, or at least the kinds of men I grew up with, would call you up and let you know that he was angry in deep, calm tones.
And so I hung up and started making plans.
My decision to leave Los Angeles didn’t happen right away. I talked to some people, although not about the attack, which I still kept locked inside, and while I thought more about things, I continued to date men who neither were sensitive nor had deep values. I certainly do not mean to imply that all California men have something wrong with them, but, still slowly recovering from my rape and growing more homesick all the time, I began feeling that the lifestyle I was seeing was patently phony. Ambitious men on the fast track to make it in Hollywood cared deeply for superficial things that I didn’t care about at all and seemed to think that projecting an image was more important than being real.
Even so, I wasn’t ready to go back home to Kansas. I would have felt too defeated, too much like I had failed at something and I wasn’t even sure what. So one day I sat down and drew myself a map of the states of Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.
Then I stood up, closed my eyes, twirled around and put my finger on the map. I opened my eyes and saw it landed on Texas.
I did the exercise again. And again. In all, I twirled around blindly seven times. Five out of those seven times my finger landed on Texas.
It seemed to me a sign. Everyone I had spoken to who came from Texas loved it. I’d heard stories about riding down rivers on inner tubes, taking trail rides, exploring mountains and caves, deserts and forests and the Gulf of Mexico.
One way or the other, I was being guided to Texas.
Later I looked at a real map. Dallas appeared to be a sprawling metroplex where I figured jobs would be plentiful and I knew the University of Texas had a branch campus in the Dallas suburb of Arlington. I called the Dallas Chamber of Commerce for information and the woman who answered the phone was warm, friendly and sweet; she even offered to send me brochures on all the college campuses in the area. The brochures arrived, as promised, within two days and I was sold.
It didn’t take me long to pack my modest belongings into my little car and hit the road.
And as I was driving out, over the radio came the hit Jerry Jeff Walker song, “If I Can Just Get off That L.A. Freeway without Getting Killed or Caught.”
Turning up the volume, I sang along and headed for Texas.
Sometimes things happen from time to time in my life which seem to be signposts. They let me know that Someone greater and smarter than me is guiding my path. I call them mini-miracles, because I don’t know how else to explain it.
If I tried to write the story of my life as a novel, most editors would probably reject the story, claiming it was just too unbelievable. But it’s my life; it happens and, in truth, it can be pretty remarkable sometimes.
Once I had moved to Arlington, I found a nice duplex home not far from the University of Texas at Arlington campus, got a job and enrolled in classes. A couple of months into the spring semester of 1973, I was sitting in class, waiting for the professor to show up. Suddenly I commented aloud, to no one in particular, “I wish I knew if they had a place at Six Flags Over Texas,” (located in Arlington) “where they let you work doing live portraits like in Disneyland. Because I draw faces really well and it would just seem like the most fun way to make money.”
The young woman sitting right next to me almost fell out of her seat. “Are you kidding?” she cried. “I’m the business manager of the portrait artists’ concession there and they do! They’ve started training already, but if you’re really talented and you really want to do it, they’ll take you anyway.”
Like I say. A mini-miracle.
I started out as a watercolor portrait artist, making from $10-$12 an hour, which was really good money at the time. Learning to do quick portraits in watercolor on live subjects—many of whom are wiggling children—is a real trial by fire. You can’t make mistakes, you can’t cover up and the paint dries in about sixty seconds. You can’t even use white paint for details like the gleam in someone’s eye. What you have to do is paint around that little point and leave the white paper to stand in for white paint—and pray that none of your other