Painting Life
Dennis A. Francesconi takes pride in using his mouth to paint for a living.
By Dennis Pollock / The Fresno Bee
October 28, 2004
Dennis A. Francesconi is right-mouthed.
The Madera man says he can use only the right side of his mouth to do the paintings that have won him world recognition and the opportunity to create a label for a Madera winemaker.
“I grip the brush tightly with my molars,” he said. “If I grip it in the center of my mouth, it wobbles. If I use the left side, I don’t have control.”
Seated in his wheelchair, Francesconi used his mouth to sketch and paint in acrylic the label that Ken Post soon will have for a new wine he is bottling at a Madera winery.
Francesconi did it all from what was in Post’s memory of a stone wall in Paso Robles, a vineyard and a full moon. After working 19 years in highway construction, Post is excited about a career change to winemaking and a label he hopes will convey “a festive moon.”
The label will debut on a 2002 cabernet sauvignon-merlot blend and subsequently on varieties that include a rose, zinfandel and sauvignon blanc. The wine will be sold first through Catalano’s Market in Fresno, which makes an effort to carry locally produced agricultural products.
Francesconi said he was excited to design and paint the label for Post’s new Lunada label.
“Having my name and the name of my company on the back, that’s a huge trophy,” said Francesconi, who did not charge Post for the painting. “And I won’t have to buy wine again for a long time.”
The label credits Francesconi and the organization to which he belongs, the Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists. Francesconi is quick to point out the association is a self-help corporation, not a charity. It’s a cooperative, run by artists for artists, which provides him with a six-figure salary for paintings that may be displayed in galleries worldwide or on calendars, greeting cards, stationery, gift wrap and other items the association sells.
He is proud of having made a break from public assistance after 19 years.
“I was never comfortable being supported by hard-working people if I could support myself.” Francesconi said.
Post, manager and assistant winemaker with Prospero Winery in Madera, learned of Francesconi’s interest in doing a label from winemaker John Sotelo, a neighbor of the mouth-painting artist.
Post said he is impressed with Francesconi’s word mastery as well as his talents with a paintbrush. He also has asked him to design a web site for him after seeing Francesconi’s web site at sconi.com , where the artist recounts the challenges that followed a water skiing accident that left him a quadriplegic at the age of 17.
“On a warm summer day in 1980, my neck was snapped as if it were a dry twig beneath a hiker’s boot,” Francesconi writes on his web site. At Chowchilla Reservoir, his skis ran aground into the sand at the shore, and he was catapulted more than 30 feet, landing on his head.
“I found out in a hurry just how difficult it is to hang on to a fast-pace world with no hands,” his web site continues, adding that he felt he “had just received a life sentence, and my body was going to be my prison….
“I was now an alien in my own world.”
Francesconi credits his wife, Kristi, with pulling him out of the doldrums that found him hanging out with a friend “named Jack Daniels.” He set aside despair when she came into his life two years after the accident. The couple married on Valentine’s Day 2002.
“I saw him for the person he was,” Kristi said. “I didn’t see the wheelchair.”
The Francesconis have traveled extensively to explain the Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists.
On Saturday, they will participate in media events at a NASCAR race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Driver David Green, ranked sixth in the Busch Series, will have the association’s logo affixed to his car as he takes part in the race.
“Imagine that [logo] traveling at 200 miles per hour,” Francesconi said.
Jim March, who heads the North American activities of the Atlanta-based association, said he believes this is the first time a mouth or foot artist on the continent has designed and painted a wine label.
March said Francesconi’s elevation to a full member of the society — after working as a student and then associate member — was one of the quickest promotions at 51/2 years of anyone in North America.
“That’s because of his hard work and creativity,” March said. “He is passionate with his paintings and profound in his thinking. His work is more than good. It’s excellent. He will not say his work is finished until he is 100% satisfied with it.”
The association has more than 600 members in 77 countries. Fifty-five of them live in the United States, and eight are in California, including longtime member Clayton Turner of Fresno, who helped guide Francesconi on his path to mouth-painting fame.
Turner is known for art that captures the West.
“When you are in his gallery, you can smell the leather and hear the wagons,” Francesconi said.
He said he spent two years studying art with Turner before joining the association. “I wanted to build a good foundation.”
Turner said Francesconi is “the best new artist I have known in my life, the only one I have fully recommended to [the association].” Turner was instrumental in showing Francesconi how to paint from his wheelchair.
The relationship between Post and Francesconi has included more than a little humor.
Both men laugh as they recall a mixup that happened after Post, who was also looking into having his house painted, was told “the painter called.”
Wrong painter, it turned out.
Post called Francesconi, thinking he was talking to a house painter, and asked about getting an estimate.
“I said, ‘I don’t think you want me to do it unless you have a really long brush or you want one line three feet off the ground all the way around the house,'” Francesconi told him.
As he paints, Francesconi grips his brushes so tightly their ends appear like twigs gnawed by beavers. He starts by wetting the brush and dabbing it on a towel repeatedly to make the bristles flexible.
Working on a mountain lake scene with a cabin in the foreground, he dips the brush into some purple paint, then combines it with some white and adds shrubbery to anchor the cabin that had, until then, seemed to float on the horizon.
Because he is so close as he paints — the 8- to 12-inch length of his brushes — he will later set the painting on an easel in his living room so he can view it from 15 to 20 feet away.
Before he developed the ability to make detailed paintings, Francesconi could not sign his name.
“I was known as X,” he said, recalling how he used to sign Social Security documents. “I couldn’t write that great big name.”
One day, in frustration, he pulled the pen from his useless fingers with his teeth and began practicing writing his name. Then came doodles.
“Kristi put them on the refrigerator,” he said.
The doodles became more sophisticated: missions.
“Some families go to Disneyland,” he said. “Ours visited the missions.”
Now there is the label, the paintings he does for the association and other volunteer work that includes at least two paintings for families of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq: one for a family in Conyers, Ga., whose son was killed in a suicide bombing near Najaf; and another for a family in Abilene, Texas, whose son was killed by a sniper in Mosul.
He’s also doing a 6- by 4-foot piece he calls “Freedom,” showing an eagle, the American flag and military dog tags.
“I appreciate what they [soldiers] are doing,” he said. “I’m not getting shot at when I go outside. These people put their lives on the line.”
Photos by: Mark Crosse / The Fresno Bee