PORT HADLOCK, Wash. — A dirty truck is a blank canvas for Austin Becker.
“I guess we're going to see what I can come up with to put on this truck because it is really dirty,” he said as he sized up the filthy door on the back.
"Wash Me" is something you don't want to do to any truck Becker's gotten his hands on.
When he's not hauling doors and windows for Carl's Building Supply in Port Hadlock, he's making masterpieces on his lunch break. He starts with a sketch.
“So, I do like to do these doodles just preemptively to get an idea of the negative space,” Becker explained.
His nickname? The Lumberyard Artist. His tools? Whatever's on hand.
"A stick and gloves work just fine,” Becker said, donning a pair of latex gloves and grabbing one of the many long sticks kicking around the lumberyard. He uses the stick to sketch an outline on the back of the truck.
“He has a background in graphic arts. And one day he just decided that he was going to start drawing on the back of a truck that we had not been washed yet," Tom Rider Becker's boss said. "And now [it] just kind of caught on and it's kind of become a life of its own. If he has not done it for a while people are wondering when Austin's gonna do his next work of art, his next Mona Lisa on the back of our Carl's box truck.”
Star Wars Droids, The Grinch and the Jurassic Park logo are just a few of Becker’s past truck-dirt masterpieces.
"Washington is a very good dirty car maker, the weather does its job for me,” he said as he works, wiping away the grime until his vision’s revealed. In this case, a Seattle skyline complete with the Space Needle.
He works quickly - because he's got to get back to work. He has to stop when his 30 minute lunch break is over. Then it’s time to hit the road and deliver windows and doors, along with a bit of art appreciation. And when they see his work, his customers are always curious.
"That's usually the one question I get - why am I driving a truck?” said Becker. “It's a good job. It's not a bad job."
Besides, Becker's art isn't meant to stay in one place.
"I like drawing these because it makes people happy to see it driving around," he said.
The final stroke for these 'paintings' is always the same - the truck's gotta get washed eventually. And the Lumberyard Artist doesn't mind washing his art off at all.
"Oh it's easy. It's easy. It just means I get to do it another time,” he laughed.
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