The Bike-Shop Painter

Artistic jack-of-all-trades Jim Veronee wasn’t always painting naked cyclists on Springfield buildings. Not that he’s complaining.

Sit with local artist Jim Veronee in the musty storefront studio on West Commercial Street, and you will hear the tales of his life’s work through a series of quirky quotations. There are his seven marriages (“A rolling stone gathers no moss.”), his years of hard work (“First you perspire, then you get inspired.”) and advice for those looking for direction in life (“The Jewish folks [in the Old Testament] kept asking, ‘Where’s the signs?’ Then they ended up 11 miles from where they started.”).

He’s lived here since 1999, but Veronee has loved and lived all things artistic since he moved from Nebraska to Hollywood as a teenager. There he worked as an apprentice for a man who painted signs, houses and even movie sets. Before long Veronee followed suit, working on backgrounds for sets during Hollywood’s golden days. He remembers seeing Clarke Gable and Marilyn Monroe roaming Tinseltown backlots. He became good friends with Ava Gardner’s body double.

In the five decades since then, Veronee has bounced all over the country, creating art wherever he goes. Today he calls Springfield home for the second time in his life, and though it isn’t like him to settle down permanently, 70-year-old Veronee admits that he’s starting to feel his age. For now at least, 417-land seems like a nice place to settle. Hollywood was nice, but fame has never been his calling. Even here, some projects are certainly more noticeable than others—like his work painting the walls of Queen City Cycles in downtown Springfield—but work is work, which is why he also fills his schedule with less recognizable jobs like the address signs for Springfield photographer Randy Bacon’s new Monarch Art Factory.

His name sounds like that of a 1970s game show host, but Veronee is no tanned, feather-brushed, pearl-toothed TV announcer. Tobacco stains the tips of his whiskers and his voice is deep and scratchy from smoking. Veronee’s basically a secondhand smoker. He lights up a new Pall Mall as soon as the last one disappears, but rarely does it touch his lips. Instead he dangles each cigarette between two fingers as gray ash creeps up to the filter. He doesn’t ash it until the heat of the burn reminds him it’s still in his hand.

He’s done set production for films such as Forrest Gump, The Untouchables and Die Hard: With A Vengeance, although you won’t find his name in the credits. He once gave acting a “half-assed try,” but working with his hands has always been his strong suit. He’s a creative guy in search of a creative environment. Sometimes that means recreating Da Vinci’s The Last Supper on church walls on the East Coast. Other times it’s using Playboy centerfolds for inspiration for nudes.

At press time, he was still working on the series of murals on the outside wall of Queen City Cycles. And even though some of those paintings depict naked men and women—all on bicycles, of course—he doesn’t think artistic nudes will stir up too much controversy. That’s exactly what he told one concerned police officer who questioned his work. “He said, ‘The powers that be would appreciate it if you didn’t put any maiden hair or nipples on those women,’” Veronee recalls. “I said I wasn’t planning on it.”