MAN OF MANY TRADES BACK TO PAINTBRUSHES : MURAL ARTIST LEAVES CORPORATE WORLD TO BE HIS OWN BOSS.

Byline: Ron DeLacy The Modesto Bee

Since dropping out of the corporate world in the 1960s, Jeff Puccinelli of Murphys has been a photographer, alternative newspaper publisher, furniture maker and watercolor artist. Now's he's into painting acrylic murals in restaurants.

``I can just keep adding to this as I get the time,'' said Puccinelli in front of his 25-foot-wide, eight-foot-tall mural in the Buena Vista Inn.

You wonder what there is to add. The scene already includes such down-home touches as a 1950 Chevy truck, a cowboy herding three cows and a calf down a country road, a big barn, a windmill, white rail fence, horses grazing and a three-legged dog.

Elsewhere in the restaurant, Puccinelli has painted a scruffy cowboy on the men's room door, a frilly cowgirl on the women's room door, and another mural - one-foot high, 20 feet long, behind the bar.

It provides a railroad-scene backdrop for restaurant owner Ron Moon's LGB-scale electric train, which chugs overhead around the entire room whenever Moon decides to crank it up. Eventually, Moon wants the rail-side mural to follow the entire circuit - 148 feet around the room.

So Puccinelli, 54, has more work to do here. He also recently lined up commissions for murals in Pismo Beach and Riverbank.

``It's good to be busy,'' said Puccinelli, who, with his old cowboy hat, flannel shirt, jeans and cowboy boots, looks like a character right out of his mural. ``I've always done art of one form or another, and I try to stay with it completely - but it can make you broke.''

His last ``regular job'' was in the early 1960s, he said, when he was painting wine labels for E.&J. Gallo Winery in Modesto. He made such an honest attempt to fit in with the corporate structure that he even wore suits to work.

But the rules got to him, and one year to the day after taking the job, he quit.

``I couldn't handle being told not to change my oil in the parking lot,'' Puccinelli said.

He packed up his 1952 Morris Minor convertible, moved to Murphys in Calaveras County and has been his own boss ever since.

He published the bimonthly Bear Valley Spectator and Boog A Loo News for a couple of years, then another paper called The Murphys Owl. He was the graphics and photo department, and his wife, Peggy, did all the writing.

Then he opened the Wooden Nickel Co., where he created custom furniture for a few years. Eventually, he got back to his brushes, using watercolors to make paintings as big as murals and as small as post cards.

He still occasionally takes a side job outside his art, to keep the bill collectors at bay. At Pismo Beach, for instance, he will be delivering newspapers to help supplement the income while he works on a mural at Giuseppe's restaurant.

But he won't be wearing a suit, and the paper route will take just a few hours out of his day. The rest of the time, he'll be doing what he most loves doing - painting.

And if he decides to take some time out to change his oil, he'll change his oil.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Jeff Puccinelli of Murphy's, Calif., touches up his mural at the Buena Vista Inn in Knights Ferry, Calif.

Associated Press