Here's a transcription of the interview comments made by Barks about this painting order before he had completed it. The interview was conducted by my wife Lynda and me (and recorded on audio and video) on June 14, 1997. I never knew whether or not he did, in fact, complete the painting. Apparently he did. I would love to see it in some form.Here's the quotation from Barks:
I have an order from some German to paint a picture of one of the old comic book covers. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do a good job on it. Because as I've grown older my hand is shaky, and my eyesight is getting so bad from macular degeneration, that I can't focus on things, so that painting a picture now I have to paint so close to it and have plenty of rest for my hand, and to paint all that stuff with a limp little water color brush-it's a very fine quality of sable hair, but it is limp. I don't know whether I'm going to be able to do it, but I will try to get this painting done, and that I believe will be the last one I ever do-painting. But these colored pencils, I can do those because you have to bear down so hard on those pencils to get the pigment to come off on the paper that the shaking is all taken care of because it's just ground into the surface of the paper there where it can't shake.
It [the painting] was the one of where Uncle Scrooge had a blanket and he had a little fire and was sending up smoke signals of dollar signs. And this guy wanted something added-it was a helicopter with Flintheart Glomgold in it. I can't imagine what that purpose was, but something this guy imagines is worth a lot of money.
End of Barks quotation.
This will be included in my edited chronological collection of Barks interviews entitled "Carl Barks: Conversations," to be published by the University Press of Mississippi. Donald Ault
Professor of English
University of Florida
http://www.nwe.ufl.edu/~donault/
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