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Brushstroke bandit thwarted: J.J. Long's
painting returns from brief vacation in New Hampshire  "Heat Covered Clouds", an original painting by Melrose artist J.J. Long was apparently stolen from the artist at last month's Victorian Fair in the city. Melrose - Turns out Melrose artist J.J. Long’s missing painting, reported as stolen from the Victorian Fair last month, might have just had a Jack Kerouac moment and decided to go on the road — literally and figuratively. An overjoyed Long had his painting returned to him last week by the Reardon family, who live in Melrose on Leonard Road, after the painting spent time lying in the street, leaning up against a telephone pole and eventually making its way to New Hampshire. Reardon kids Erin and Victoria, along with their cousin who lives in New Hampshire, noticed the painting leaning against a telephone pole shortly after the Victorian Fair on Sept. 16. Since it wasn’t a stray cat or dog, Gail Reardon acquiesced to the standard plea, “Can we keep it, Mom?” “We have trash the following day, so we were thinking it was trash,” Reardon said. “The girls picked up the picture, and my niece says she wanted the picture so she took it home to New Hampshire.” Meanwhile, after the Free Press reported the painting missing the Thursday following the Fair, Long received an anonymous phone call the next week from a woman on Leonard Road who told him she found the painting face down in the middle of the street, so she picked it up and leaned it against a telephone pole. After receiving that phone call and checking the length of Leonard Street, Long started knocking on doors. “I went to Leonard Road with copy of the Free Press in my hand,” he said. “I probably talked to 12 different families, no luck. A lot of people confirmed that they did see it, they had seen it in the middle of the street or leaning up against the telephone pole.” Adding to Long’s fears was the fact that Monday was trash day on Leonard Road, according to residents. “I was like, ‘Awesome,’” he said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “There’s not even a thief enjoying it, and there’s no chance it’s going to show up on Antiques Roadshow. That kind of stinks.” It was only the week after the Free Press article appeared later that the kids noticed the Free Press article regarding Long’s painting and brought it to her mother’s attention. “I’m busy with the kids, I don’t read the paper every day,” Reardon said. “The kids noticed because it was on the front cover. I never even really looked at the picture itself clearly. We walked back from the fair and my niece says she liked it and so she took, it, and I didn’t even really look at it.” “She had completely forgotten about it,” Long said. “They let the cousin take the painting home with her. The painting was actually in New Hampshire for a couple of weeks.” Gail Reardon called Long several times, but the artist’s dislike of unsolicited phone calls delayed the painting’s return a while longer. “When she called, her number didn’t show up
as a number, it showed up as ‘unknown caller,’” Long said.
“I always get calls from telemarketers and credit card companies
and stuff. When I did pick up, I was like, ‘What?!’ Reardon, for her part, didn’t want to just leave a message, so Long never knew who was calling. “The kids wanted to hear the conversation, so it was more limited time to call him,” she said. “There were only so many times I could reach out to him. On Thursday night, we finally got in touch with him. We called three times in a row and he finally picked up the phone.” The painting did survive its magical mystery tour relatively unscathed — though the edges were chewed up and a bird had decided to use it as a toilet, Long said. “I had to repaint it, but it looks like the same
it was,” he said. “I think [the Reardons] thought the bird poop
was paint.” Since the girls liked the painting so much, Long rewarded them with photo prints of the painting itself. “They’re a wicked nice family with a heart of gold. There’s nice, honest, generous people up there,” he said. As to how the painting started this excursion, Long still believes it was originally stolen, and that perhaps the brushstroke bandit had a change of heart and left it behind, a few blocks away from the scene of the crime. “It happened some time after load-in,” Long
said. “I was with my Dad and we were loading in stuff, parked on
Main Street right in front of Eastern Bank. We kept going back and forth,
so it must have been when the van was not being attended. Someone either
had taken out of the van or taken from my booth when I wasn’t there.
I’m definitely going to have another person to guard my stuff from
now on.” 
J.J. Long sports a wide grin as he stands with Erin and Victoria Reardon in their Leonard Road home. The girls found Long's missing painting after reading about it in the Melrose Free Press. |
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One eye open: Art by J.J. Long chosen
for governor’s inaugural event
J.J. Long’s oil paintings are grounded in realism, but the final compositions are reminiscent of the films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. In those movies, actors were filmed and then, in post-production, animated. The result is extremely life-like animation but with a surrealist quality, as if the images were plucked from a lucid dream. Long’s landscapes, portraits and still lifes possess that same quality: each figure is distinguished and true, yet seems to stare back through a filter, pushing at the edges of each line and stroke. For the viewer, the paintings are as tangible as distant memory, with large, clearly defined boundaries and opaque details filling in the rest. That ephemeral quality of visual snapshot may be why one of Long’s paintings was featured at Gov. Deval Patrick’s North Shore inauguration reception at Merrimack College on Friday, Jan. 5. Reception organizers were soliciting local artists to display artwork of North Shore scenery at the reception. Long submitted five samples and was chosen along with 25 other artists to take part in the event. The chosen painting ‘Enchantment,’ a landscape of Spot Pond in Stoneham, captures the timelessness of nature nestled within that suburban oasis with the aspect of capricious childhood vision. For Long, 25, a Melrose resident, his paintings are simply products of a singular vision — he has been legally blind in his left eye since birth. “It’s weird, I never really think of myself as being legally blind. Sometimes I forget because I’ve been seeing the same way since I was born,” he said. “I think it’s important to let people know this is how I see.” Long recalls a fellow artist once telling him there is a slight haze over his paintings and everything seems to be down a shade. “After she said that, I was like, ‘I think you’re right.’ I think it looks how it’s supposed to look,” he said. His impairment has become his strength, as Long translates from cornea to canvas to present a view of the world that only he can see. “You can tell it’s my work, so to speak — it might have to do with a slight haze or my shadings,” he said. “I try to paint realistically and my style is realism. I paint a lot from photographs and stuff. When I look through my left eye, I can’t discern any detail at all. “I don’t know how I’d paint with 20-20 vision. I wish someone could look through my eye and say, ‘What the hell is this?’” Interestingly, the artist with a skewed vision of reality fell into realism as his predominant style. “I just paint that way because I think back, when you’re in kindergarten or grade school, I always thought the best art was the one who makes it look the most real. They made something look as real as possible, that’s how you know how someone’s a good artist,” he said. “That’s not the way it is at all, but that’s just the way I was brought up, so to speak. I don’t favor realism over another type of art. I like all styles of art but that’s what I just kind of locked into from the beginning.” “I’ve tried abstract and love abstract, and
it’s not that I can’t do it, I’ve just built up my reputation
as a realism oil painter.” Long could not see his own future when he first arrived at the University of New Hampshire as a freshman. He chose UNH because of its strong liberal arts background, and his desire to get away from Massachusetts for a time while not straying too far from his home in Melrose. With his focus on a liberal arts education, becoming a painter was not an idea that had even crossed his mind. “I knew I wasn’t going to be a rocket scientist,” Long said. “I think my sophomore year of college, one of my introductory painting teachers asked, ‘What’s your major?’ I said, ‘I don’t have one right now,’ and he said, ‘Well, why don’t you paint for a living.’ I said, ‘All right.’” Long considered leaving UNH to attend a school like MassArt, but professors counseled him that applying himself and working hard to improve would dictate his success, not which institution bestowed his degree. “Plus, I had already built up my friends there,” he said. “I had a great education up there. The professors were really good.” After graduating from UNH in 2003, painting quickly fell by the wayside as Long sought financial stability. “I’d say for two years after I graduated, I didn’t paint at all, just because I had immediate bills and stuff like that,” he said. “It’s not that I didn’t want to paint. I just didn’t think I could paint and make a living off of it.” He hopped from office job to office job, all the while lacking fulfillment as he sought to strike a balance between a man’s needs and an artist’s heart. “Month after month you’re paying off schools loans, and you’re like, ‘Wow, I’m paying for an education I’m not even using.’ I felt there was something missing, sitting by a cubicle and not doing what I love to do,” he said. On his 24th birthday — “I did that on purpose,
so I’d remember” — Long cast aside his reservations and
began work as a full-time artist. For almost two years, his life has been
painting as he tries gaining exposure through showings in Melrose and
at galleries. The arts community in Melrose, and the Melrose Arts and Cultural Association ####(MACA) in particular, have helped make Long’s transition to full-time artist a viable and sustainable decision. “MACA has really been good for me, as has the Hourglass [Art and Gift Gallery] downtown,” he said. “The arts community here is just amazing, there’s so many different opportunities and so many unbelievable artists. No one I’ve come across has an ego and everyone’s willing to help each other out.” That willingness to help out fellow artists led Long to be featured at Patrick’s inauguration reception. He heard about the event from a fellow artist, who forwarded him e-mail with information on the event. Thus, ‘Enchantment’ became part of a historic event. ‘Enchantment’ and other of Long’s works are quiet, serene and calm. That might surprise those who know Long from his other passion as lead singer in the band Asystole, whose heavy drums, thundering bass and distorted guitars are a pummeling assault on the listener in the vein of bands such as Tool, Sevendust and Mudvayne. “I tell people all the time I paint my happy trees during the day, and then at night I turn into the devil,” Long said with a laugh. “It’s my kind of balance in nature, I guess, as a human. You can’t just be happy all the time and you can’t be angry all the time.” Asystole have started to make a name for themselves. They were just sponsored by Jagermeister, who will pay for band merchandise, CDs and give the band an opportunity to open up for national acts. “Someone once asked me, ‘What would you rather do, playing in a band or painting the rest of your life?” Long said. “I want to do both the rest of my life.” |
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New Artist J.J. Long Vows To Follow His
Dreams (Arts & By Liz Jennings, Melrose Weekly News, Published:
September Local artist James Creighton Long Jr. (J.J.) is After receiving his BA in Art from the University of In March, on his 24th birthday, Long made a decision to Since then he has participated in at least three art shows, The main medium he works in is oil painting. His studio “I’m trying to make it happen!” says Long.
“I’m young and Long says that he has always loved art and he took courses He has developed his own website, www.jjartworks.com,
where By day Long paints but by night he sings in a heavy metal Their next show is set for Sept. 30th at the Half-Time
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*All artwork on this website is the artist's original
work and is copyrighted by James C. Long, Jr. © 2008
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