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Blair was also more of a traveler. He spent time in 35 states and remembered most of them. Those he did not remember he tried to imagine. All the historical scenes that he recreated, whether of a picnic or a town at a particular moment in time, were painstakingly researched not only for topography but also for the costumes of the ladies and the shape of the horse-cars. His picture of bringing the Yule log into a Baltimore house is a scene that ostensibly portrays Blair's father and himself as a small boy. It is a scene that never was — the family never -lived in Baltimore.
Earthy Aphorist. If the public was slow to discover Blair, young avant-garde artists were not. Such radicals as Edward Kienholz and Billy Al Bengston forgathered at the old house Blair had bought in Los Angeles, admired his paintings and delighted in his company. Blair always gave them coffee (he kept careful records on just how each guest preferred it) and his own home-baked bread, for which he won many prizes at county fairs. Afterward, everybody pitched horseshoes in the backyard and listened to Blair's inexhaustible tales of his and other people's pasts. His speech was marked by rattling prosody and tart aphorisms. Samples: "Two bottles that hold less than they appear to hold are a perfume bottle and a whisky bottle." "Truth is stranger than falsies." "We can't go through the eye of a needle because of our baggage."
Blair died 2½ years ago. "As a person, he was one of nature's most successful experiments," says Kienholz. As a painter, he was his own best experiment — and should survive.