Hoping for Accidents

At first glance, and even after a second one, the watercolors looked like kids' stuff. They weren't, but they were by an amateur: Playwright Clifford (Golden Boy, Waiting for Lefty) Odets.

The exhibition was in Manhattan but the artist was in Hollywood, and wishing he were somewhere else. In the voluntary torments of Hollywood, Odets had found escape in painting--but his words about it packed more professional wallop than his pictures.

"Goddammit," says Odets, "we're living in an age of learn-it-quick. Everyone wants to learn all the tricks of everything he does, all the angles. Every professional writer feels the pressure this vicious, evil society imposes. But in watercolor painting I don't feel that. I can relax. I am an amateur, and I can damn well produce something on which $100,000 doesn't hinge. I paint for two reasons: to cultivate my innocence and to cultivate my ignorance."

At 40, Odets earns enough as a movie plot-doctor to collect art (he owns some 200 canvases ranging from the French Impressionists to Georgia O'Keeffe), but he was looking for something to give him creative "self joy." His wife gave him a watercolor set.

Odets averages one to five hours a picture, working late at night in his cellar, hopes for technical "accidents" because "accidents are very important. They can result in some damn good works. And a 'loose' amateur can sometimes have one." As in writing, he begins not with a mental image but with an idea. "Last week," Odets explains, "I heard a piece by Bach called Sheep May Safely Graze, so I painted a picture showing sheep safely grazing. It's as simple as that."

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