Coromo in New York, parts 1615 - 1618

1615. How could Coromo know so much about the paintings of Uncle Thomas? He visited him regularly to bring him his painting supplies and to give him his money for all the painting that the tourists were buying was the explanation. With the money Uncle Thomas would buy lots of strong drink, which he claimed, gave him all of his good ideas, which he was able to paint even without the aid of stencils using a kind of mental telepathy.

1616. There were many reasons why Coromo did not want to be responsible for the pictures he painted. The most important was it allowed him to listen to the comments of people who looked at his paintings. Once he started to make pictures he soon discovered that people were never willing to say anything critical to an artist for fear they will hurt the artist’s

 feelings. He had only been painting a short time but how many times had he heard about how, “beautiful” everything was that he did, he couldn’t even count.

1617. Then there was also the consideration of his own evaluation of what he was doing. Sometimes he was certain that he had invented something very special that only he could do and he had a real gift he had not been aware of, then at other times he felt just the opposite, he thought it was all a silly kind of scam and he was robbing people to take two hundred dollars for something that was just some paint smeared across a piece of cloth.

1618. But if it was a scam, he had not invented it because it came about of itself. On the other hand, perhaps the tourists were taking advantage of him. Money did not seem to mean anything to them so perhaps the explanation was they were just making fun of him and leading him on just for a joke. Would people spend hundreds of dollars so as to have a laugh at a person who has been made to think something stupid they are doing is valuable?