Cattle Drive: The Coffee Table Book That Sparked an Artist’s Publishing Journey

In 2005, a phone call between Bruce Garrabrandt and Jeff White ignited a creative partnership. After experiencing Bruce’s first publication, *The Power of Having Desire*, Jeff envisioned a broader audience for Bruce’s remarkable work and suggested an interactive or video format. This inspired their collaboration on Nature with a Twist: A Playful Look at Life, Art, and Other Turmoil, a video program of comedic storytelling with slideshows of Bruce’s drawings as intermissions between each segment.

After that project, Bruce looked to fulfill his dream of publishing a large coffee table book of his drawings. In 2008, Cattle Drive: (And 153 Other Random Acts of Artistic Nonsense) came to life. This 192-page hardcover book beautifully captures his first fifteen years of artistic expression, complemented by humorous “Artist’s Observations” on themes such as animals, creativity, discipline, and more.

Below is the introduction to Cattle Drive written by Bruce S. Garrabrandt.

Studies show that a good sense of humor can boost the immune system and improve physical health. Laughter—and lots of it—increases our T-cell and other “fighter cell” counts, helping to ward off illness and disease. So, please—buy this book. (I’m only thinking of your health.)

It’s gratifying to be able to earn a living as an artist. Frankly, it’s been a blessing. You see, I have no practical skills. Had I never learned to draw, I probably would have starved to death.

It’s not that I haven’t tried to develop useful skills, mind you. But my attempts at “home improvement” projects have always resulted in home deterioration and arterial bleeding. I quit going to hardware stores years ago. Employees in orange aprons would see me coming and scatter—darting into the lunchroom or scurrying out the back door, just to avoid me. They didn’t want to be charged,later, as accessories to the crime.

The only tool I ever learned to use with dexterity was a crowbar. For a time I actually made good money with it. Unfortunately, you don’t find many pay phones around anymore.

The art world, I learned early, is full of pontificating blather. In college, one of my pencil drawings was featured in a student art exhibit. The work pictured a young woman in overalls, sitting cross-legged in a field, her face wearing a pensive look. In the distance stood a farmhouse, barn, and silos. It was a quiet, bucolic scene. As I stood nearby the drawing, within earshot of an art professor and his lady companion, I was shocked to hear him drone on about the layers of symbolism contained in my artwork. When he began describing the silos in Freudian terms, I walked outside to clear my head in the night air. “Those are silos,” I thought. “The drawing is just a farm scene.” That day began my understanding that more nonsense exists in the art world than anywhere else on earth—with the possible exception of perfume advertisements.

In 1987 I met comedian Steve Allen. He was hosting a daily radio program on WNEW-AM in New York. Occasionally the show aired from a local restaurant, where the public was invited to dine and listen. On each table were printed cards asking, “Do you have a question for Mr. Allen?” One afternoon I gathered a stack of these cards and filled them with questions like the following:

“Is it safe to argue with a demolition expert who knows where you live?”

“Whatever happened to the inventor of Cliff Notes— was his life cut short?”

“When mimes get arrested, do they always go quietly?”

During the program that day, Steve Allen read my nonsensical questions and paid me a nice compliment. “You should write humor for a living,” he said. (Mark Twain once remarked that he could live off one good compliment for two months. That kind comment from Steve Allen has sustained me for two decades.) His words inspired me. I began working humor into my art, creating a series of what can best be described as “random acts of artistic nonsense,” whimsical colored pencil drawings done in a realistic style.

At one time I longed to create serious art. Today, my gratification comes from doing drawings that make my wife groan and roll her eyes. It happens every time. Life is full.

All of my colored pencil work is featured on my website (www.artbybruce.com). I’ve been carried, kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century. I was barely comfortable in the 20th. If it weren’t for air conditioning and modern dentistry, I’d actually prefer the 19th.

In 1999, I sent some of my whimsical art to Steve Allen, thanking him for the encouragement he’d given me on his radio show a dozen years earlier. When he learned my wife was an innkeeper, he sent along what he described as an old bed-and-breakfast joke: “It’s a charming place. They only charge $20 a day, with breakfast thrown in. If you want breakfast carried in—it’s $12 more.”

While Steve Allen was largely responsible for my artwork taking its playful turn into left field, I owe my success as an artist to all of you who have enjoyed my work enough to purchase it for yourselves, and as gifts. Your support through the years has enabled me to spend my days doing what I enjoy. With humility--and much appreciation--I send you a spiritual hug.

Getting back to the laughter/longevity connection, this does sound plausible to me. After all, Bob Hope became a centenarian, as did George Burns. Henny Youngman lived long enough to join the nonagenarian club. Other members included Milton Berle and Victor Borge. Their playful attitude toward life--and their legacy of humor--remind us all to laugh more often.

When your plans fall apart, why fall apart with them? Let your emotions take a detached step back as you pick up the pieces and move forward--with a smile. Make that a habit and you could live longer. (Even if you don’t live longer, you’ll certainly live happier.)

It was George Burns, by the way, who told us, “If you do live to be 100, you’ve got it made, because very few people die past the age of 100.”

Toyland, a song we often hear during the Christmas season, contains these poignant lyrics: Toyland, toyland, mystical girl and boy land. Once you pass its borders, you can never return again. I disagree. We never lose our childlike sense of wonder and curiosity about life. It just slips into dormancy when we settle for lives of habit and routine. But here’s the good news: We can reawaken that five-year-old child within us by embracing an attitude of playfulness and immersing ourselves, daily, in the blessing of humor.

It is common for new mothers to experience a period of melancholia following the birth experience. They are not alone. Sooner or later everyone suffers a kind of postpartum depression. After all, life is often non-supportive of our efforts. At times it seems downright hostile toward them. I take comfort knowing that, at birth, we all join the same fraternity of frustration. The camaraderie is what makes our membership bearable. We’re connected by common confusions, bound by similar burdens, baited by the same bugaboos. Life hounds and harasses us homogenously

That should be enough alliteration to hold you awhile.

Mingled with the artwork in this book, you’ll find a collection of personal, life observations I’ve made through the years. (Spending hours alone at the easel each day gives me plenty of time to ponder.) Some of these reflections are upbeat, while others take a somewhat darker view of things. The yin and yang principle in Chinese philosophy claims that a positive and negative equilibrium exists in the universe.For me this balance of opposites is the most intriguing aspect of life.

Cynics build a convincing case that the world makes no sense. Optimists counter with a powerful argument for a world full of meaning and creative potential. Life is full of folly, but it is folly to think that only folly fills it. How easily we see through cynical eyes and lose our peripheral vision for all the beauty and good surrounding us. We bitch and moan in the middle of a miracle

You may find some contradictions in thought in the following pages. It’s the old yin and yang again. Paradox is a universal epidemic. Show me any human being not riddled with it.

“Do I contradict myself?,” Walt Whitman once asked.

“Very well, then, I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes).”

We all do. Rejoice!

Here is the drawing that started it all. While browsing through an old National Geographic, I came upon a photograph of penguins walking in a straight line, so close together that it got me thinking, “What would happen if the penguin in front suddenly fell over backwards?” Public reaction to this piece of artistic silliness was so positive that it spurred me on to create a series of whimsical wildlife images.