Over the course of the pandemic, Allen has covered the walls of the bar on the corner of Broadway and Bloomingdale Avenue with murals of mountains, flowers, loons and their chicks, clouds and ponds.

Allen said painting the murals was his idea, but he could not have done it without the blessing of Rusty Nail owners and friends Bruce and Cindy Thompson, or the support of his friends, family, second family, mentors and artistic opportunities he’s been granted in life.

“I never thought I’d paint a building,” Allen said.

Last year, Allen painted the inside walls in isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. This year, he’s been painting the street-facing walls.

A mural painted on the Rusty Nail by local artist Peter Allen is seen here Friday. (Enterprise photo — Elizabeth Izzo)

–

Gift-giving

–

Allen says he is a reclusive painter. There’s a very small group of people he feels comfortable painting in front of. Painting the outside walls this year put him out in public, on one of the busiest intersections in town.

He said drivers passing by honk at him while he works, or roll down their windows to shout to him.

A mural painted on the Rusty Nail by local artist Peter Allen is seen here Friday. (Enterprise photo — Elizabeth Izzo)

This public display of creation scared him, excited him and pushed him to grow. He’s grateful for the opportunity. He said it’s given him purpose during the pandemic. This is how he got through the isolation of lockdown last year — through painting and expression.

Allen says pandemics throughout history have been marked by advances in art and science, a silver lining to a dark cloud. He said he’s painted more during the pandemic than he has since art school.

Allen feels this opportunity was a gift given to him by his friends and by God, and he turned it into a gift for others.

He’s a believer in karma. When he talks about the murals, it’s often in terms of getting something and giving something, giving something and getting something.

–

Musical muses

–

Allen always paints with music on. He said if you gave him thousands of dollars of material and a quiet room, he’d just sit on a stool.

His friends who have seen him paint say he paints with the rhythm of the music. On Tuesdays, at the Open Mic Night held at the Nail, he plays the rhythm section on the shaker, the djembe or the cajon.

His painting style and desire to create are inspired by musicians like Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell.

Allen said he “steals” from all over. He took Amedeo Modigliani’s noses — crafted with a few simple lines — and emulates the way Georgia O’Keeffe’s desert landscapes flow.

“To me, the mountains move,” Allen said.

–

Contrasting collaborations

–

Allen is proud of his work at the Rusty Nail, but also humbled by it.

His emotions are fickle. He is shy, but he’s also very outgoing and bold.

He’s got a tough outer shell, but get to know him and he’ll spill out a multitude of thoughts and emotions. He can say a million words about the murals, but he believes the expression itself says so much more than can be put into words. It confuses him, and he doesn’t know how to talk about it, but he tries.

The statements he makes about the murals sometimes seem contradictory — “It’s not about me, It’s about the art,” “It’s not about the art, it’s about you,” “It’s not about you, it’s about what you see” — but to him, these statements are mutually exclusive.

When everything is connected through art, even contradictions are in harmony, it’s in contrast that you can truly appreciate a painting.

In painting and talking about painting, Allen is trying to make sense of the world and his place in it.

–

An eclectic art education

–

Allen doesn’t believe in art for money. The idea disgusts him. He didn’t get paid for his hours of work at the Rusty Nail. Bruce and Cindy just gave him the building-sized canvas, the paint and some drinks.

Allen studied in the last class of the Lake Placid School of Arts before it closed in 1980, then at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica. He never got a degree, though. He found mentors instead.

“I could never have paid a university to get the education I got,” Allen said.

He met his first mentor as a kid growing up in Port Henry, down the street from artist Nancy Powers.

She was “artsy and regal,” he said, and she inspired him.

In the 1990s, he lived and worked with art writer and dealer Regina Slatkin on Park Avenue in Manhattan for several years. He dined with her guests she’d make him show his paintings to the art buffs she’d have over.

He’d visit art galleries and had his notions of art challenged. He didn’t care about Jackson Pollock’s splatter paintings until he stood in front of one.

“It enveloped me,” he said.

But that art world was never for him. Too “foo foo” for his lifestyle.

“I don’t want to be Van Gogh. I don’t want to be Michelangelo. I want to be me,” Allen said.

The walls of the Rusty Nail are his Sistine Chapel.

–

Art and atmosphere

–

The Rusty Nail is described as a dive bar. It used to be a rough place, Allen said. But he hopes he’s created a beautiful, calm space there, where the atmosphere brings joy to people. His friends there are his second family, he said. It feels like home.

He said he specifically chose calm colors — blues, greens and yellows.

Some appreciate it, and some don’t notice, Allen said, but the paintings are still there, having an effect on the bar patrons, he hopes.

Allen first painted a few wall panels at the Rusty Nail in 2009. But now, he feels they are too aggressive, too red.

Bruce saved a few of these panels and they are still on display, along with Allen’s contemporary work.

Allen believes his murals should create an environment. They should have a practical purpose, drawn out of their aesthetic qualities.

The walls make for unique canvases. Allen had to work out the correct mixtures of acrylic and watercolor paints to get them to congeal to the surfaces of wood, clay and cement.

Outside, he said the layers of cement look like Italian frescoes.

Allen hates ladders. To avoid them, he devised unique tools, like a brush duck-taped to a long PVC pipe.

One night, Bruce accidentally locked him inside the bar. Allen painted for 12 hours — just him, his music, his canvas and a couple drinks on the house. Eventually, he fell asleep on a pile of bar mats with a rug on top.

Now that he’s painted the inside and the outside, people ask him: “What’s next?”

He tells them, the roof.

He jokes that he’s going to paint a big red circle with an “H” and “M*A*S*H 4077” so helicopters can land there.

To Allen, his paintings are personal and spiritual. He said he put his beliefs, his experiences — himself — into them.

He paints self-portraits often, and the birds, flowers and mountains on the walls are no exception. He put himself in the walls and he said they’ll be there long after he’s gone.

At night, these landscapes imitate the natural world they depict. The crickets chirping in the day lilies sound at home. The moon illuminates the blue and green mountains.