Is he a member of the world’s greatest rock band – or an exquisite painter of livestock and other worldly (and otherworldly) matters? Is he Rico Bell – or Eric Bellis? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Eric Bellis meets us outside his home.* Eric Bellis, AKA Rico Bell of the Mekons, who just happen to be the best group on this earth. The Mekons remind us at times, if you need to know, of the Clash and the Pogues, but that’s not quite the point, really.

(*Alas, a good long while has passed, Froggypumpkin being slow out of the gate, so please make temporal allowances.)

The Mekons, in all their records and performances and manifestations, are defiant, gentle, witty, wise, ribald, touching, self-deflating, engaging, wryly mocking, rocking. Rollicking, lilting. Teaching. Subversive. Friendly. They have already celebrated their 25th anniversary. They are what punk rock becomes when it doesn’t shoot out its heart or discount brains or forget principles.

We – Gabrielle Neuman and PMN of Froggypumpkin – had happened to spot Eric/Rico at the Sunset Junction festivities the past weekend. He was sitting a bit away from the bandstand, along with his wife and daughter and her boyfriend. We waited until he finished eating, then wandered over and asked him if he was indeed the “Highland Park Mekon�? – which is how he had been identified on stage, by a fellow band member, at a concert we had attended some months earlier. Most of the band is primarily situated in England and/or Chicago, not in this working class, historically Hispanic L.A. neighborhood where Bell resides. An interview was arranged…for which purposes, he invited us over. Though we are not Rolling Stone.

First he took us through his home back to his studio. As we wandered, he pointed out the work he was doing to construct a proper studio space. His home had been decorated significantly with art, including much of his own that we certainly noticed as we passed by, because it is lovely. In the studio more of his work was up and around, in various stages of completion. We commented that some of his work reminds us of an odd and pleasing mix of Breugel and Thomas Hart Benton (something about the mix of the allegorical and the natural, was our private contemplation). Possibly gratified, he said that he very much likes Benton and also Grant Wood. We also mentioned a contemporary American artist, Steve Galloway. Later – days later, in thinking back to his work – we would also be reminded of Balthus.

Prominent as he sat in the studio was one portrait of a sheep, seen from its side. It turned out that many such sheep, and also pigs and other farm animals, have been depicted by Mr. Bellis. They have the studied colorful splendor and stately presence of the great paintings of English racehorses of centuries past. There’s a splendid flesh and grace and body to these animals that Bellis paints, with a slight or even grand elongation that may or may not be exaggerated, as well as a twinkle in the eye that shows someone’s leg may indeed be pulled. The hint of surrealism is therefore vastly downplayed. These works are truly cherce. We ask, dumbly, if the sheep is patterned after a real-bred sheep, not a cloned drone of one. Real, he says. He is mostly soft spoken, and has enough mirth to laugh with frequency,