Chanticleer

Gardener, school bus driver and insurance investigator are some of the jobs Waid held before his artistic career took off. After acquiring his graduate degree in painting from the University of Arizona in 1971, he landed a job teaching at the new community college in Tucson. During his time teaching at Pima Community College he started to lose interest in the formal aspects of painting. Since there was no running water in his classroom at Pima Community College, Waid decided to take his students outdoors to draw. This time spent in the desert ignited his interest in nature and its growth processes and greatly influenced his artistic style. Waid began exhibiting in 1974 and by 1980 he was successful enough to resign from teaching and paint full time. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Tucson Museum of Art, the Albuquerque Museum of Art, Palm Springs Desert Museum of Art and many other public collections throughout the United States. Prominent art critic John Perreault has declared Waid?s work to be complicated and gorgeous. He describes Waid?s work as comparable to jazz because the paintings are serious, yet still easy on the mind. In his usual monumental style, Waid has created a painterly vision of the desert in Chanticleer. The title literally means ?rooster,? and to the right of the center of the painting you can make out an abstract head and neck resembling a rooster. The brilliant yellow flower appears to be a plume on the rooster?s head. There also is a tree with the same name as the title, and it flowers and resembles the yellow flower, too. The flowers of the Chanticleer pear tree are white but when the sun sets they do look like the yellow flower in this painting. This painting makes a bold statement with its bright yellow flower, intricate designs and sensual overtones throughout the composition.