The Billiards Paintings of René B. Ruffner

Though I am the only one in my family who made a career in art, I do in fact come from a family of artists. René, an older brother, today works steadily as an artist, painting fine still lifes and landscapes. He also plays in local and regional billiards tournaments, and has painted a number of pieces depicting that very mathematical passion. Today, I'm turning the blog over to René, who will be telling the stories behind his own paintings:

Old School High Roll  |  © René B. Ruffner 2011 

Thanks, Mark. Old School High Roll is a very large oil on canvas, mounted on panel. If you were to approach a pool player and propose, say, a race to 10 for $20, and he responded with "How about a race to 10 for $200?" then you could say you'd been "high-rolled." So there are sharks, but sharks can be divided into pelagic and littoral sharks. The subject matter would measure about 8" wide on the front plane, yet has the feeling of both spaciousness and compression in the canvas' 40" width. Doing this oil, I discovered the odd fact that Payne's grey mixed with white produces a close semblance of dollar-bill-green. This is called Old School High Roll because everything in the painting is an antique,
from the cylindrical Brunswick chalk to the old "Clay" balls, to the Gold Certificate.

Two Rails for the Two  |  © René B. Ruffner 2011 

This is the earliest of my large pool oils. The player posed for me at a "Super Seven" tournament in Baltimore Maryland. The dynamics of his posture and the shaved head appealed to me, as it was a pose Bellows might like. As my paintings progressed, I got more patient with background details, to which I'd simply allot sessions, rather than try to hurry through.

A Dame Takes the Cheese While Jaybird Watches  |  © René B. Ruffner 2011 

This very small oil on panel was based on a single vintage photo of a solitary woman shooting behind her back. I spliced her with an image of me (in the Stetson), and my old "Fortress America" pool table to complete the scene. The background character is "Jaybird," a habitué of Breaktime Billiards in Front Royal, Virginia, who always hectored me to play for cash ("cheese," in pool parlance). The sign on the back wall, which isn't legible at low resolution, is a deco warning that "Absolutely No Gambling is Allowed." Because I took my reference photographs in a small enclosure, getting the perspective on the floor and table was a challenge.

Action at the Blue Fox  |  © René B. Ruffner 2011

That's "Mr. Barnes" playing 9-ball at the Blue Fox in Winchester, Virginia. Conrad, sitting against the "Absolutely No Gambling" sign on the back wall, owns the Blue Fox, and I disingenuously placed him in this painting hoping he'd pop for another pool oil; he's bought a few. This is another large painting that posed challenges — balancing color and lighting and components, I brought together literally dozens of reference photos. Mr. Barnes, incidentally, is a master of safety play or defensive pool, "punting" the cue ball around so that when it's your turn to shoot, you're hidden behind a wall of balls, a mile away from your object ball.

Champions at Midnight  |  © René B. Ruffner 2011

The title of this painting is a play on words, as it is loosely based on reference photos I took at Champions Billiards in Laurel Maryland. I took the liberty of painting myself as the bartender. This scene typifies the drama, tension, and lighting in pool halls. I think that if Caravaggio were alive, he'd head for the nearest pool hall with his easel. By contrast I was examining a nice gallery photo of a Civil War reenactment; lots of smoke, blazing muskets, and yet the posture of the reenactors was that of people watching a tire being changed. In billiards, the action is avid, all attention is focused on a single thing, and the body language shows it. I like the figure of the woman looking over her shoulder — she reminds me of Piper Laurie. I perhaps unfairly got the reference shot for her by getting into position with my camera, and saying "hey!" I think the figure of the man in the upper right background was a success because he looks "Tooker-esque." 

Willie Morton, 1999 APA National Amateur Champion  |  © R. B. Ruffner 2011

Willie Morton posed for me in 2003 at Atomic Billiards in Washington, D.C.  I played him at a tournament in Champions Billiards in Laurel the same year. He said he was down because his eyesight was failing, but he may have just been laying the groundwork for a more remunerative game. After he won the National Championship in 1999, Morton began going by the nickname "Jackie," because, as he said, he'd earned the right to use it. His lifelong hero was Jackie Robinson, whom I inserted in the background of the painting, wearing his 1946 Montreal Royals uniform.

Cicero Murphy  |  © René B. Ruffner 2011

This is a painting of Cicero Murphy, a player of great repute who was eventually inducted into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame. I met Cicero (James) Murphy in Chicago in 1969, where I'd been sent to a government school, but played hooky to shoot at a pool hall with near-shrine status, Bensingers Billiard Academy. Bensingers had been Walter Trevis' model for the "Ames" Pool Hall in his book The Hustler and the movie of the same name. I didn't know it at the time, but Bensingers would shortly close its doors forever. I would meet Murphy twice more in different venues before his death in 1996. While he looks fierce in this depiction, I saw him as a modest, quiet person. Cicero Murphy had a very jazzy, snappy "slip stroke," meaning when the cue came forward as he prepared to strike the cue ball, it actually slid through both of his hands until he caught it with his right hand at the last moment. He was the consummate position player.

This is Mark again. I'll end this guest posting by showing a view of René's Virginia studio. A landscape is in progress, and Cicero Murphy perpetually looks over the artist's shoulder.
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