The History of MooneyAngelo

While in college the Lawn Whisperer dated an Art Major. He spent many a night sitting up with her as she worked diligently to meet her deadlines for her projects. What is a guy to do while his girlfriend is sculpting and painting? He decided he would sculpt and paint with her. Taking the scraps of Bristol board and left over paints he set out to entertain himself with his artistic talent. I use the word talent very loosely.

One of his first creations was a barn. He painted it free hand. It was very ugly. He named it the “Ugly Barn.” His next piece of work was a picture of a duck. It was pretty lame. He titled it the “Lame Duck”. LW’s middle name is Mooney, which is an old family name, and he signed his work MooneyAngleo.

The best part of the “Lame Duck” was the birds flying in the sky. LW never having studied art in elementary school was unaware that the simple way to draw birds flying in the distance was to use the style of the lower case ‘m’. LW thought that he was supposed to use the lower case ‘w”. All of his early paintings had birds flying upside down. The upside down birds became a signature trademark of his work.

The MooneyAngelo signature upside birds also inspired a series of paintings. A blue “w’ was a Blue Jay. A red “w’ was a Cardinal. A black ‘w” was a black bird. He painted these on canvas as well as boxer shorts.

I an effort to expand his horizons, MooneyAngelo embarked on painting more complex scenes. His works during this revolutionary period included: “The Invisible Robber”, which a was a black and white etching of a stick figure policeman pointing a gun at and empty space. “The Snowball Fight” which is two snowballs boxing. And “The Unfortunate Cow” which showed a cow not quite making it over the moon.

Having a minimal audience that understood his genius, MooneyAngelo realized that some of his images needed a story to make a more serious impact on the viewer. “A picture is worth a thousand words.” He said. “But with a story, my pictures are worth a thousand Plus.” And so each of his masterpieces would now have a companion poem.

Fast Forward
Many years later, LW rediscovered his portfolio of hundreds of paintings and poems. Knowing that there may be an audience for his work at this time, he sought to improve upon his already existing ideas. Since MooneyAngelo had the artistic style of a
2nd grader, LW asked for assistance from his brother William who had the artistic style of a 5th grader. William would re-invent the images, adding his own influence while keeping true to the original context of the writing and images.

And that is the history of MooneyAngelo.


I plan to update the MooneyAngelo Blog/site once a week. Please check it out and leave comments. Lawn Whisperer loves comments.