Behind the Paint: The Ailing Painted Lady Painting

This is a painting of two houses.

We all know this painting of Paulette's because it's become part of popular culture, but did you know there's a story behind it, a back story that goes like this?

Paulette went painting with her cousin, Mr. Let's Paint TV, in San Francisco, and they decided to go paint the famous "Painted Ladies" houses on Steiner Street facing Alamo Square.  Paulette had the choice to either pretend the house had no scaffolding and mesh in front of it or to paint it as it was.  So she painted it as it was, and the board of tourism got very upset because it reflected poorly on the city to show one of its famous sites in an unflattering light.

The controversy drove the painting's price sky-high to over 50 American dollars.

And the city of San Francisco banned Paulette for life, but it didn't stop her from from coming back into the city disguised as Minny Mouse in a fluorescent pink dress playing a trombone.

Behind the Paint: The Mr. Let's Paint TV Portrait

This is a painting of Mr. Let's Paint TV.

We've all seen this image a million times in postcards, calendars, coffee-table books, tattooed on art school kids bodies, on billboards, carved into trees, branded into cows, branded into people who like being branded, and lately, we've seen it a lot because of the new Let's Paint TV movie that will hit theaters in 2016.

Yes, we've seen this image everywhere imaginable, so much so that we're up to our eyeballs in it, and quite frankly, we might be getting a little bit tired of it, but did you know that there's a back story to this painting that goes like this.

Mr. Let's Paint TV and Paulette went to San Francisco to paint en plein air (outside), and first, they went to California Street where it intersects with Market Street.  They painted there until they were done, and then they drove in an automobile to Black Point Battery, a place with a big old cannon from the first American Civil War.  When they got there, Mr. Let's Paint TV set up his easel and painted 3 images of Alcatraz stacked on top of each other on a single canvas.  This painting is now worth over one billion pounds, British Currency. 

Paulette was tired and a little sick from a cold, so she painted this now-famous portrait of Mr. Let's Paint TV as he was painting his Alcatraz Triplicate because she didn't feel like doing a larger, more involved painting.  And she didn't want to paint Alcatraz because it seemed a little sad to paint something that was a prison.

The painting is currently for sale by an anonymous seller for ten thousand dollars (US).

Paulette Humanbeing: In Her Own Words

Here is a picture of Paulette painting.

I started singing at age 7 or 8 in Mrs. Matkin's class, and then I started taking piano lessons when i was 11, and then i started playing the guitar when i was 16.  I started writing songs about that time too.  I was only 39 when my song, "'92 Toyota Tercel" was played on npr's Car Talk, throwing me deeply into the limelight, making me an international celebrity.


Eventually, I needed a break from my celebrated life.  My enormous success just got to be too much, and so I started painting, much to the dismay of my rabid fans who frequently threaten me when they see me painting.  But hey, F#ck 'em.  It's my life, and these are my own words.