Painted military rock finds its true home
“I really like to paint military rocks, eagles, U.S.A. rocks. I’m proud of my country. I love my country. One time this lady wanted me to paint a picture of a tattoo. It was a military scene with a flag and these soldiers shaded in. I thought, OK, tattoos are straight-line work, so it should be pretty easy. When I looked at the tattoo more closely, the bottom had these tombstones all lined up. And it almost killed me to paint that. I just had a very emotional, really hard time painting it.
“When I finished, the lady who ordered it never came to get it. So I kept it for a long time. Then we did a show over in Crosby, and they were having a gun show the same day. There were a lot of people interested in the military. So this one guy came over and said, ‘How much do you want for that rock?’ I told him $20 is usually what I charge for the big ones like that. He gave me $50 and said, ‘Thank you very much.’ He loved that rock. He said, ‘I’m going to keep it forever.’ I went back over to the gun show later, and he had a display. That rock was showcased on his table. I told him how difficult it had been for me to paint it.
“That’s one that just really resonates with me, that stays with me. But I was so happy he ended up with it. Because I think these rocks really find where they need to go. I mean, that woman wanted the rock at first. But I guess it just wasn’t her rock. It was his rock. It ended up where it needed to be.
“I think a lot of times, when people find these rocks that we hide, the messages we paint on them are really meant just for them. And that’s pretty cool.”
— Vickie Sims
She belongs to the Baytown Rocks group, which helped launch the local rock-painting craze. You can find some of her creations there, as well as on her Vickie’s Rocks page.
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