Itinerant artist will paint for a bed and a meal

Jim Mott's cross-country odysseys are an attempt to barter art – and hang it in the homes of everyday people.

By Ray Sikorski | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the October 16, 2007 edition

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Bozeman, Mont. - Modeling himself after Odysseus, landscape artist Jim Mott has set out on the Great American Road Trip. He has boldly declared that his journey will be virtually free of monetary exchanges, and he will depend only on his wits and his paintbrush to weather his journey's vicissitudes. He has taken it upon himself to redefine the nature of art, travel, money, and hospitality in an age increasingly defined by individual insularity.

The only thing is, Jim Mott is terrified of what he's doing.

"I don't like travel," the Rochester, N.Y.-based artist confesses. "I'm scared of adventure."

But that's the whole point, he concedes. "I'm at the mercy of all these things I can't control. It stimulates a lot of creativity, a lot of productivity. It makes me rise to the occasion."

Mr. Mott is on the second cross-country tour of what he refers to as the Itinerant Artist Project, in which he embarks on a road trip and offers a small oil painting in exchange for two to four days of room, board, and friendly conversation. On his first tour, in 2000, Mott says he traveled nearly 10,000 miles through 23 states over the course of two months. Since then, he has made several smaller journeys, through western New York, New England, Maryland, and Arizona. He chooses his hosts beforehand, making contact through word-of-mouth, e-mail chain letters, entreaties on his website, and a classified ad he places in The Nation magazine. He now has created over 300 paintings during his travels.

"It's like a productivity machine," he says, explaining that he'll create more paintings in one to two months on the road than he'll do in a year or two at home.

On Sept. 18, Mott flew to Seattle and picked up a '98 Chevy Prizm he bought for $3,800 over the Internet. He's now driving the car along a northern route, eventually to end up back in New York around Halloween.He spent his first nights at an artist's house in Issaquah, Wash., where he traded a 6-by-9-inch oil painting for room and board. Further down the road, in Sandpoint, Idaho, Mott upped the ante on a host's guess of the number of paintings he could complete during his stay.

"I said I could do five," Mott recalls. "He said, 'No way,' so I did seven."

Other than the one painting he gives as a gift to his hosts, Mott sells some of the paintings he makes, typically for $300 to $500. But mostly he prefers to keep the collection intact for a possible traveling exhibit – and, he'd really prefer not to use money on the trip, except for gas.

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