Archive Record
Metadata
Accession number |
2000.026 |
Catalog Number |
2000.026.001 |
Object Name |
Audiocassette |
Date |
03 Aug 1999 |
Title |
Terhune, Mike Oral History |
Scope & Content |
Original tape. Audio tape of oral history interview of Mr. Mike Terhune conducted by Nita Cole, Bossier Historical Center on 08/03/99. He talks about the paintings of Mr. Edward Bledsoe that are part of his private collection. The purpose of the interview is to select paintings for an upcoming exhibit at the History Center. Interview: Mike Terhune August 3, 1999 Interview conducted by Mrs. Nita Cole with Mr. Mike Terhune at the History Center. He will be talking about the paintings of Mr. Edward Bledsoe that are part of his private collection. The purpose of the interview is to select paintings for an upcoming exhibit at the History Center. Tape 1, Side A, Counter 1-345 [Mrs. Cole] Talk about this night scene now, it says Westbrook's Landing. [Mr. Terhune] This is where I used to hunt and fish when I was a kid. I just gave him (Bledsoe) a brief description of how the camp was set up. They had some boats that they rented. So he painted this pretty much like I remember it. [Mrs. Cole] Was this out on Bistineau? [Mr. Terhune] This was on Caddo Lake. It's called James Bayou. It's close to Tree City. [Mrs. Cole] This is unusual because he doesn't have any people in it. Ordinarily he has people in it. [Mr. Terhune] He didn't put people because it was suppose to be a night scene, or early morning. The one that he did, that my dad got, has a chimney, it's got some smoke around it. It's like it's real early in the morning. It's little bit different. So we might can use it. [Mrs. Cole] This is a really nice one. But the one your Dad has is already framed. I'm going to put this one probably to one side because we'll use the one that your dad has. [Mr. Terhune] Okay. This is just another church. [Mrs. Cole] Oh that's nice because it has the bar-b-que. [Mr. Terhune] Yes. They're cooking on the grill. [Mrs.-Cole] Now, are these just some paintings he brought to you or ... which ones did you commission and which ones did he just bring to you? [Mr. Terhune] This particular one (a church scene) this was sort of a combination of both our thoughts. I told him I wanted the church scene and so he said, "Well I'm gonna paint you one with cooking like they used to do after the service." He's got the cemetery out here and two out-houses, one for the men and one for the women. [Mrs. Cole] This is a really good one. I like this better, although I love the other church scenes.Yeah, well I kind of want to do one with the rainbow. But I think this is got a lot more interest in it. [Mr. Terhune] This is where they do the baptism (in the pond near the church). [Mrs. Cole] Yeah. The little pond out there to the left. Tell me when you first met him. [Mr. Terhune] I was in my office and he happened to be walking down the street, of all things. [Mrs. Cole] Where is your office located? [Mr. Terhune] Off North Market. And he was at that time, he stayed with his sister-inlaw for a short time. And he happened to be walking by and he saw me out there. He was wondering if I would be interested in buying some of his paintings. And so we just got to talking. He was sort of down on his luck and needed some money. And I had seen him at the Revel years ago. [Mrs. Cole] And so you knew who he was. [Mr. Terhune] Oh yeah. I didn't know who he was until he told who he was. I thought it was just somebody just, you know, pan-handling. But when he told me who he was, then I realized who he was. The very first painting he did for me was, he called it a bayou scene. It was this one right here. This was the very first one. He said, "I'm going to do you a bayou scene." And that was the very first one he did. [Mrs. Cole] And this has a little cabin along side of it with a child fishing out in the front.How long ago was that? When did you first met him? [Mr. Terhune] That was probably in January of `99. He would paint maybe one or two a week for me. Sometimes he would just surprise me and sometimes I'd give him ideas, if I had something in particular, like the Westbrook Landing. The one my mother has, it's got a ice truck. When she was a child, her dad delivered ice and when she was about six years old, she'd help him.So, I got that ...I gave that one to her for Mother's Day. It's real nice. [Mrs.-Cole] And you just told him you wanted one with a ice truck. The one that he created, did your mother recognize the image? [Mr. Terhune] She said, "Yeah." [Mrs. Cole] So it's accurate in other words. But all you said to him was you wanted a ice truck. [Mr. Terhune] I told him that he delivered ice up around Gillam and Belcher in the farm area up there. It (the painting) is a farm house with a Black lady outside. I think she's washing clothes in a wash pot. Her husband is on the front porch. And it shows where the ice truck is pulling up with my grandfather and mom getting out and walking toward the porch. [Mrs. Cole] What was her first impression when she saw it? [Mr. Terhune] Oh she just cried and cried. It was real emotional on Mother's Day. [Mrs. Cole] And it was a recognizable image to her. [Mr. Terhune] Oh yeah. [Mrs. Cole] I think that is amazing that he could do that. [Mr. Terhune] She's hung it in her den. My daddy has a little computer room that he plays around, read his magazines and he has the painting of Westbrook Landing on his wall. And he just sits there and stares at it. [Mrs. Cole] Did he used to go hunting and fishing over there too? [Mr. Terhune] Oh yeah. He used to do it when he was a kid. His daddy brought him there when a boy. Then he brought me on when I was a boy. My dad's been going there for over fifty years.Mr. Westbrook's been dead for probably over twenty years.But it still has a lot of memories. [Mrs. Cole] I bet it does. I think that's what's so interesting about Edward's paintings is that he evokes a emotional response in people through their memories. And he's able to capture that. [Mr. Terhune] Yeah. People can look at these and they can relate to somewhere in their childhood. That's why they're so popular. Some of these, like this craw-fishing scene or fishing scene, this is just something he did. He said, "I'm going to surprise you." So he did. [Mrs. Cole] This snow scene, I think it's really interesting because that's quite unusual. You didn't see very much snow here. [Mr. Terhune] Yeah. I told him I wanted a snow scene. He decided to put it on a bayou and he added the snowman. [Mrs. Cole] So it would be definitely a south Louisiana scene. [Mr. Terhune] I really like the colors in that one. [Mrs. Cole] Yeah. Now here's a night scene. I really like that one (dark, with rain). [Mr. Terhune] Yeah. He often does that. Strange part about it, he only had I would say, no more than ten colors. He would mix all his colors together to create the colors that he used. [Mrs. Cole] Did you ever see him while he was working? [Mr. Terhune] Oh yeah. He would get two or three different kinds of paint and mix them together, just make a ... put it on his table that he worked on. And he just mixed them together, would scrub around with the brush, and put it on the canvas until he got it just the way he liked it. Generally, he didn't have to change anything. He told me that was his first, I guess it would be his only painting, that had lightening in it. He hadn't done anything with lightening. But that's one of my favorites too. [Mrs. Cole] It is, it's very nice. It's very effective too with the rain falling. So we'll put that in the keeper file (for the upcoming exhibit). I started keeping files in here and I'm trying to keep it organized. And he did a combination of north Louisiana and south Louisiana scenes. Now, this is the pecan picking. [Mr. Terhune] That's the Pecan Pickers, he picked up pecans when he was a kid. So he.... that was some of the experiences he's had. [Mrs. Cole] That probably was just seasonal work that he did at the time. Obviously from his childhood, I would think. [Mr. Terhune] Right. This is another bayou scene which was funny, after I got home with it, I got to looking at it, and see the bird? [Mrs. Cole] Yeah, he's got the bird going backwards. But that's wonderful isn't it. [Mr. Terhune] Yeah. But, I mean that's just typical of his type of art I guess. [Mrs. Cole] Well, and from the artist's view he's got the same heron on either side of the painting. And so, they actually look good going the wrong way, you know. [Mr. Terhune] I think he told me he only went to the sixth grade. Something like that. Then he started working, I guess on the farms. [Mrs. Cole] Did he talk very much about his childhood? [Mr. Terhune] Not a whole lot about it. No. He would just tell me that, you know, that he had done those things. That he had picked cotton, picked pecans, and shot marbles. He's got one of these, that the kids are shooting marbles. [Mrs. Cole] So basically, you think his paintings tend to reflect more of his childhood. He was incarcerated when he was in his twenties, so his paintings tend to reflect more images of when he was not incarcerated, from his childhood. Do you think it was a happy childhood? Did he talk about that? [Mr. Terhune] I don't think it was a real happy childhood. [Mrs. Cole] I've been trying to talk to some of the relatives and that's not easy to do. But I understand that he lived with an aunt and uncle on Stoner Hill for awhile. [Mr. Terhune] Okay. I hadn't heard that story. [Mrs. Cole] Yeah and I don't know if that's true or not. I mean this is just what ...this is what one of his cousins told me. But if you've talked to him, and he talked about picking cotton and ... [Mr. Terhune] Yeah. He never mentioned whether he lived with his parents or who raised him. I never found that out. That particular painting there, my dad asked for, that was the store that was down the street. It's Leach's general store and that's still part of Caddo Lake up around James Bayou. I just sort of gave him a description of how the store was laid out and the lake was behind it. I'm planning to give that one to my daddy. He hadn't seen it yet. [Mrs. Cole] Maybe we'll keep this one back (from the exhibit) then if he hadn't seen it. `Cause you know, you want it to be special for him. We'll find another one. I'll put this over here in dad's section. We'll find another one that has a general store on it. [Mr. Terhune] Okay. [Mrs. Cole] It's interesting that you have all these snow scenes `cause I haven't seen them.Also, this tree doesn't have any leaves on it. I think that's one of the few paintings that I've seen where he doesn't have leaves on his trees. [Mr. Terhune] That's the one he just came up with. This is a smoke-house. The man is getting something, some kind of meat to smoke. [Mrs. Cole] Probably ham or pork. That is real interesting. You said that all these paintings that you have are from `99, because that's when you first met him. [Mr. Terhune] Right. [Mrs. Cole] Did you see any of his work prior to that. [Mr. Terhune] Oh yes. I saw them at Red River Revel. I spent a lot of time looking at them. I just couldn't... I didn't buy any at the time, but I wanted some. [Mrs. Cole] Now this one, I think is one of my favorites. This is with the mother reading to the children inside. I think you said that he commented on this. He wanted to show an interior scene. [Mr. Terhune] Right. Yeah, sort of unusual, his perspective of the roof, on the ceiling in that... apparently, back in those days, they didn't have ceilings. In other words, you could see the rafters in the house. So, that's what he was trying to get across. [Mrs. Cole] Also the fact that it's all one room. There's a bedroom, living room, and kitchen all in the same room. But also the fact that the mother is reading to the children, that was probably a very important part of his life since he didn't have a lot of schooling. He probably learned things from his parents or aunts and uncles or whoever was around when he was a child. [Mr. Terhune] (Viewing the painting of a plantation house with a bank of flowers on the side.) He really does good with these colors. You see these dots, I don't know what type of flower that is, but in the spring, you see them. This guy is just so... [Mrs. Cole] Well he really makes good use of his pinks and purples, because we know that this is really red dirt and it looks red, but it looks pink. I think it's really effective. That's what he also use for his perspective, which I think is good.Even though he had no training, you can see in some areas where his perspective is not as good as other areas. I really like that one. Tell me about his personal life? Did you know anything about him? [Mr. Terhune] Well, he was a drinking man. That was probably his biggest down-fall, in my opinion. I talked to some people that said that he could have been... made a good living for himself if he could just have stayed away from the bottle. But, he was always... [Mrs. Cole] And it was difficult for him. [Mr. Terhune] When he was not drinking he was very educated. I got a lot of pleasure out of his talking about life in general. He learned a lot when he was in prison. He had a lot of common sense about things that he had learned, you know, just from the school of hard knocks. [Mrs. Cole] Did he talk about when he first started painting? [Mr. Terhune] He started painting, he said, when he was a kid. He was able to draw just with a pencil. He used to draw houses or trees. His friends and family were impressed with him at that, you know, when he was a kid. Then when he went to prison, he decided that he wanted to, he told me that he wanted to be able to learn some type of trade or skill while he was in there. So, they had some kind of art class and they had competition at Angola. He said the first year, he was like, third place. The second year, he won first place and whatever his competition was, he said he won first place every year he entered after that. He tells me he did a portrait of Governor Edwards. And there is also some of his work, might have been some of his competition that he did, that was put in the Governor's mansion. [Mrs. Cole] Have you seen any of his portraits? [Mr. Terhune] No. But, he tells me that was one of his specialties. But he ...the reason. . . he was going to do a portrait of my two kids, but it was going to be so time consuming, that he said it might take a month. And he could do these paintings much quicker than that. [Mrs. Cole] And he was using this for bread and butter money probably. [Mr. Terhune] Right. [Mrs. Cole] Do you think he would have been able to complete something over a month's time, I mean, I understand that his health was not good because of his drinking. [Mr. Terhune] To complete a portrait? when you could keep him focused. He would tend to... sometimes he would get distracted. You know, if he needed money, sometimes he was hard to get a painting from. Like a lot of times, he would start one for me and I wouldn't see him for two, or three, four days. `Course you know, when he's out of money, he'd always come knocking on my door. But I would have liked to have seen some of his portraits. [Mrs. Cole] Me too. I understand from Frank Kerner, that he was blind in one eye. Did you know that? [Mr. Terhune]He never told me that he was blind. But he did have one eye that looked a little cloudy. [Mrs. Cole] So you don't know anything about his family? [Mr. Terhune] I met his brother one time. I don't recall his name, but he does live in Shreveport. [Mrs. Cole] Yeah. I think his name is Curtis. But I haven't been able to find him, he's not listed in the telephone book. I haven't been able to track him down. [Mr. Terhune] I don't think they had a real good relationship. Apparently over the years, Edward had gotten down on his luck, and his brother, I think, bailed him out of trouble maybe a few times. They became distanced. Because Edward would only come around when he needed help. [Mrs. Cole] Yeah. Now this one is another night painting with an interior scene, a triple room. [Mr. Terhune] Yeah. That's the one he surprised me with. He said, "I'm going to do you something really different." He said, "I haven't done anything like this." [Mrs. Cole] An interior cabin scene, but there's three rooms now in this cabin, that's different, and also a rain scene. So I guess he was experimenting with this, as a rain scene or combination (rain and cabins). [Mr. Terhune] Yeah. He told me these girls were playing some type of game. Maybe it was jacks or something like that. I can't remember. Two girls were playing. Mama is cooking, he told me, these are eggs in the pan. And, the middle is the bedroom. [Mrs. Cole] That's interesting that the lamp is such a large scale. From what I've read about folk artists, they tend to exaggerate things that are more important. So, probably the fact that it wasn't a lot of light and that was the only source supply, that was an important element. [Mr. Terhune] Yeah that's right because in respect to the bed, it's the same size. [Mrs. Cole] Okay. What I need to do now is stretch them out and see how many we need for the exhibit. We've got a school. We'll put away some of the cabins. We can get a kind of overview. I like this one because it has cotton. He's got too many good ones. I think I'm just going to go with just one snow scene because I don't really think it's too representative. And, let's see, these are landscapes. He really doesn't have as many landscapes, or you don't have as many landscapes. [Mr. Terhune] No. [Mrs. Cole] He seems to be more concentrated on a lot of snow scenes. And this is a nice bayou scene because this is such a different color palette ...this bright sunset I suppose. [Mr. Terhune] Yeah. I like that one. That's one of my favorites. [Mrs. Cole] It's nice because it will make a good contrast with all the cabin scenes, with the browns. [Mr. Terhune] Yeah. It would really look good in the proper frame. [Mrs. Cole] Okay. Let me see where I am. This one I really like but, I think I'm not going to have enough room. I also have someone who is going to loan me six paintings that are framed that are from '92 -'93. So I think that will make a really interesting addition, and there's a general store. So I'm not going to use this general store. [Mr. Terhune] Have you seen them? [Mrs. Cole] Yes I've seen them. There's a general store, picture of a watermelon festival, bayou scene -- it's similar to that one with a cabin on it, a church scene with a rainbow in it. [Mr. Terhune] Can you tell any difference in his work, since five years. [Mrs. Cole] Yes I can, because he also has some from `98 and `99 and I tried not to pick the `99 ones because I think you have a better selection. A lot of his earlier works are not on canvas, not stretch canvas, but on a flat canvas board, you know, thin canvas, which are not as nice as stretch canvas. They all are done on 16 x 20's. He does have one great big church scene that was from, I think `97 or `98. [Mr. Terhune] Is that the one that's at King's Ransom? [Mrs. Cole] Yeah, it's Roy Shagun, and he's got like four of them up there (displayed). And the ones that he has below (not displayed) are the ones that we're going to use for the show. [Mr. Terhune] Oh, he's got some that hasn't been put up? [Mrs. Cole] Yes. There's two that are framed, you know we're going for the framed group. [Mr. Terhune] Right. I knew that Edward did some painting for somebody else. [Mrs. Cole] Yeah. He used to work there. He painted there for a while during the early `90s. And his early work, I think, is flatter, there's less perspective. He seems to, in this later work, you know, suddenly he's getting much more open space. On this landscape, you can you see this open space in the front, where he's really opening it up and the people and the houses are kind of retreating a little bit further to the background. In his earlier paintings, the stores are right in front, you know it's really prominent, whereas here, you get a little bit more of a approach (his mauve walkways). Hopefully, I like to-have something that shows a little bit like that. Let me go ahead and turn off the tape. End of interview. |
People |
Terhune, Mike Bledsoe, Edward |
Search Terms |
Oral History Art |
Lexicon category |
6: T&E For Communication |
Interview date |
1999-08-03 |
Interview place |
History Center |
Interviewer |
Nita Cole |
Medium |
Plastic |
Recording media |
Cassette Tape |
Lexicon sub-category |
Sound Communication T&E |
Inventoried date |
2025-06-12 |