1611. Coromo all the while was becoming famous unbeknownst to himself or anyone else. In a way he was even worse off than Otis because Otis was aware of the significance of what he was doing, but Coromo thought his success was just an accident, and he refused to take credit for his paintings and would instead make up imaginary people and credit them with the work when he was questioned about his paintings on the walls of the restaurant.
1612. He would say with complete conviction that the paintings were painted by his Uncle Thomas, a ninety-year-old blind man who had the shakes because he was always drinking too much alcohol. If he was asked how a blind man could do the drawing he said that before he went blind he made stencils to use as a guide for the drawing. He gave the same reason to explain why a dog would be half purple, and the other half painted yellow.
1613. When he was waiting on tables it was the children of the tourists that were most apt to ask him questions about the paintings, and for them he would make up explanations of interest to children, so he might say, “The reason the dog is two colors is because children sneak into his room when he is painting and switch the colors around but he doesn’t know the difference.”
1614. Uncle Thomas claims that purple feels different than yellow when you paint with it so he can tell the difference, all the while painting something with green that he thinks is pink. The children complement him on his paintings and give him advice saying things like, “Make the shadow the tree casts on the ground darker,” meanwhile substituting the white for black. Thy never laugh because that would give away their pranks.
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