PAINTINGS

Peacenik: portrait of Allen Ginsberg

Peacenik: portrait of Allen Ginsberg 124. Steven W. Justice 41 dia., Oil on wood 2022 Follow your inner moonlight, don’t hide the madness. – Allen Ginsberg Allen Ginsberg made supporting appearances in at least nine of his fellow Beat soul-brother Jack Kerouac’s novels, all under assumed names. In “The Town and the City”, he is Leon Levinsky. In “On the Road”, he is Carlo Marx. In “The Dharma Bums”, he is Alvah Goldbrook. In “The Subterraneans”, he is Adam Moorad. And in “The Vanity of Duluoz”, “Visions of Cody”, “Big Sur”, “Book of Dreams” and “Desolation Angels”, he is Irwin Garden. In “Desolation Angels”, Ginsberg’s father appears as Harry Garden. I still wonder how Alvah Goldbrook in “The Dharma Bums” becomes Irwin Garden in “Desolation Angels”, since the latter novel grew from and is an extension of the former, but the answer to that question may be for higher minds than mine. It’s Jack’s call anyhow, being the author. I wonder also if the surname “Garden” had something to do with Ginsberg’s being a Joisey boy. Oh -- there is one more alias that I almost forgot -- Ginsberg appears as David Stofsky in Beat-wannabe John Clellon Holmes’ novel “Go!”, which JCH originally called “The Daybreak Boys”, which would have been apt since almost all the characters and writers in Beat literature were male. Women served as their lust-objects and muses with about three emotions and no ambitions. But those gone cats could write! Allen Ginsberg would have perhaps been one of our greatest poets were he only able to curb his potty-mouth. (And get a haircut like Robert Frost’s.) He even wound up in court over his word-choices in his game-changing poem “Howl”, whose book also contained the majestic “Sunflower Sutra”. The judge sided with Allen and his publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, feeling creative geniuses are gifts, and that we should never look a gift horse in the potty-mouth.

I Told You So: portrait of Greta Thunberg

Do You Know This Man? portrait of William Bonney

Zhou & Dick (#2)

Surfer Girl: Portrait of Carissa Moore

Gold Mountain Girl: portrait of Anna May Wong

To Be or Not to Be: Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet

Amazing Grace: portrait of Aretha Franklin

Jack Maybe (#5): el sombrero es verde

Don

Colla Sinistra

American Got Sick

The Body Electric: portrait of Walt Whitman

Thay: portrait of Thich Nhat Hanh

Homestead Gray: portrait of Josh Gibson

Outrider: portrait of Anne Waldman

Longevity Has Its Place

Brando Abed

Tara

Horseless Miscarriage of Justice: portrait of Henry Ford

His Cold, Dead Hands: portrait of Charlatan Heston

Wobbly: Portrait of Joe Hill Last Night

Ready, Mr. Muzak?: portrait of Maj. Gen. George Owen Squier

The Hammer: portrait of Henry Aaron

Public Emeny #1

Queen of the Roller Derby: Portrait of RBG

Yep, Comanch’: portrait of John Ford

There’s a Red Horse Over Yonder

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Sherpa – Portrait of Tenzing Norgay

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Tutti Frutti Prosecutti: Sacco and Vanzetti

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Beggars Can’t be Chaucers

Lester in Love

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Look to See to Remember: portrait of Joseph C. Fitzpatrick

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Frida People: portrait of Frida Kahlo

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Dorothy Parker

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Don’t Drink the Water if You Can’t Stem the Tide

The Beechers on the Beach

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Virgil Quick Come See, There Goes Rubbery Lee

Steve Justice Studio Title: Virgil Quick Come See, There Goes Rubbery Lee Material: Oil on canvas Size: 48x48 Year: 2018

Singin’ in the Snow

Steve Justice Studio Title: Singin’ in the Snow Material: Oil on canvas Size: 36x24 Year: 2018 Sold

The World is a Casserole of Color

Steve Justice Studio Title: The World is a Casserole of Color Material: Oil on canvas Size: 48x48 Year: 2017

Poplar Music: portrait of the Carter Family

Steve Justice Studio Title: Poplar Music: portrait of the Carter Family Material: Oil on canvas Size: 48x48 Year: 2017

The Seven Susans of Seneca Falls

Steve Justice Studio Title: The Seven Susans of Seneca Falls Material: Oil on canvas Size: 36x60 Year: 2017

Teeny Weeny Puccini (#2)

Steve Justice Studio Title: Teeny Weeny Puccini (#2) Material: Oil on canvas Size: 48x48 Year: 2017 Sold

Wa-Tho-Huk: portrait of Jim Thorpe

Steve Justice Studio Title: Wa-Tho-Huk: portrait of Jim Thorpe Material: Oil on wood Size: 48x24 Year: 2017

WWWD (What Would William Do)?: portrait of William Blake

Steve Justice Studio Title: WWWD (What Would William Do)?: portrait of William Blake Material: Oil on canvas Size: 30x24 Year: 2017

Yosemite Yin Yang: portrait of Gary Snyder

Steve Justice Studio Title: Yosemite Yin Yang: portrait of Gary Snyder Material: Oil on canvas Size: 36 diameter Year: 2016

Oaklahoma!: portrait of Oscar Hammerstein

Steve Justice Studio: Title: Oaklahoma!: portrait of Oscar Hammerstein Material: Oil on canvas Size: 48x68 Year: 2016

William Tell Overshare: portrait of William Burroughs

Steve Justice StudioTitle: William Tell Overshare: portrait of William Burroughs Material: Oil on canvas Size: 60x24 Year: 2016

Immaculate Perception: portrait of Aldous Huxley

Steve Justice Studio Immaculate Perception: portrait of Aldous Huxley

Herman’s Big Adventure: portrait of Herman Hesse

Steve-Justice Studio Herman’s Big Adventure: portrait of Herman Hesse

Who Knows: portrait of Whoopi Goldberg

Steve Justice Studio: Who Knows: portrait of Whoopi Goldberg

Green Man: portrait of Ralph Vaughn Williams

Steve Justice StudioTitle: Green Man: portrait of Ralph Vaughn Williams Material: Oil on canvas 28x28 Year: 2016

HH14: portrait of the Dalai Lama

Steve Justice StudioTitle: HH14: portrait of the Dalai Lama Material: Oil on canvas Size: 48x30 Year: 2016

Hell With It’s Pants On: portrait of Ty Cobb

The Dubliner: portrait of James Joyce

Steve Justice Art - The Dubliner: portrait of James Joyce

The Piano Lesson

Steve Justice Studio Title: The Piano Lesson Material: oil on canvas Size: 48x60 Year: 2015 “Our party has so closely followed the growth of all musical life in our country. I have been aware of that close attention throughout my creative life.” -- Dmitri Shostakovich This double portrait explores the staying power and genius of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich who, by wits and wile, negotiated the tightrope between self-expression and personal doom in Stalin’s Soviet Union. The “piano lesson” is a common in the history of painting. I here introduce the character of the meddling Stalin, accompanied by the ghost of Marx and the words of Lennon, “War is over!”, in the style of Soviet poster art.

Erniology: portrait of Ernie Bushmiller

Steve Justice Painting Title: Erniology: portrait of Ernie Bushmiller SOLD Material: oil on canvas Size: 52x38 Year: 2015 “Being a cartoonist is like having a bear by the tail. You can never let go.” -- Ernie Bushmiller In “Erniology”, the long-time creator of the comic “Nancy” is honored as a holy fool, sitting on his throne, while mayhem ensues. His corny comics were easy to find, easy to read and easy to understand, even when he would change things up with some unexpected imaginative stretches.

O: portrait of Oscar Wilde

Steve Justice Painting Title: O: portrait of Oscar Wilde Material: oil on canvas Size: 60x48 Year: 2015 “The past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.” – Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde lectured throughout the U.S. for an entire year, perhaps making of himself the world’s first celebrity, to support a touring show he wrote starring a character comically based on himself. My usual, iconesque centering of the chakras anchors the subject and allows me to take more liberties with symmetry. The color and fashion of his clothing was as respectfully researched by me as it would have been chosen by him, except for the little clay hat he must have bought when he visited New Mexico.

Georgy Girl: portrait of George Elliot

Steve Justice Painting Title: Georgy Girl: portrait of George Elliot Material: oil on wood Size: 30x30 Year: 2015 “If we had a keen vision of all ordinary life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of the roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well-wadded with stupidity.” -- George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) George Elliot assumed a man’s name to overcome the second-class citizenry her society forced upon women, and became one England’s finest writers. It was either that or stay locked in the attic. Behind her is pictured lush English countryside, separated by her from the London townhouse where she breathed her last. The title suggests swinging London of the 1960s (Hey there, Georgy Girl), a time that might have kinder to her.

The Birth of Dizzy Gillespie

Steve Justice Painting Title: The Birth of Dizzy Gillespie Material: oil on canvas Size: 48x48 Year: 2015 “Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.” -- Charlie Parker I am amazed by the dazzling and maniacal music of Charlie Parker and his partner Dizzy Gillespie. Who begat who is an irrelevancy, since they suckled the same spirit and tried to turn their black-and-white times into vivid bebop dreams. The square format refers to record packaging, but the format and ragged-stripe detailing may also suggest a vintage vinyl floor tile, perhaps from a nightclub that would have staged this kind of music.

Bend Over, Beethoven

Steve Justice Painting Title: Bust o’ Beethoven Material: oil on wood Size: 30x30 Year: 2015 “You will ask where my ideas come from. I cannot say for certain. They come uncalled, sometimes independently, sometimes in association with other things. It seems to me that I could wrest them from Nature herself with my own hands, as I go walking in the woods. They come to me in the silence of the night or in the early morning, stirred into being by moods which the poet would translate into words, but which I put into sounds; and these go through my head ringing and singing and storming until at last I have them before me as notes.” -- Ludwig van Beethoven. I don’t know whether it was acute sense memory or a synesthetic ability to see music that informed Beethoven’s ability to compose such big music, though he was deaf. In this work, I re-animate his bust, here positioned in front of the clamor of colors, staffs and symbols his own ordered, disordered mind may have resembled. His wild hair is colored to suggest Milton Glaser’s iconic Bob Dylan poster.

Marilyn Monrovia

Steve Justice Paintings Title: Marilyn Monrovia Material: oil on canvas Size: 42x30 Year: 2015 “Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” -- Marilyn Monroe I have great sensitivity toward politics and culture in Africa, and I have learned far more about western Africa in particular through their fabulous music than through my frequent reading. One result of this cultural collision is “Marilyn Monrovia”, an exploration of African and Western beauty standards, shown here with evidence of globalization looming (unfinished) on the wall behind. The red could also be thought to refer to China’s African agenda. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but the decorative metallic and diamond border also refers to mineral exploitation of Africa. Re. the title, Monrovia is the capital of Liberia.

Etude Number 9 (or Eight Hooves to Hold Me): portrait of George Harrison

Steve Justice Painting Title: Revolution Number 4 (or Eight Hooves to Hold Me) 2 Material: oil on canvas Size: 36x36 Year: 2015 “I think people who truly live a life in music are telling the world, ‘You can have my love, you can have my smiles.’ Forget the bad parts, you don’t need them. Just take the music, the goodness, because it’s the very best, and it’s the part I give most willingly.” I became conscious of the Beatles when I was 9 after hearing their song “We Can Work It Out” on television -- until then, I didn’t know music was allowed to sound like that. I have always felt a kinship with their 20% partner George Harrison, with his work ethic, mysticism and quiet inspiration. Rich, famous, young and bored, he explored Imperial England’s oriental backwash and discovered the sitar, and introduced Eastern music to the West. I compressed my original sketch into a square format to suggest album art of the day. (Think of “Rubber Soul”.) As with almost all of my paintings, I had few preconceptions about the colors which, along with mood and some of the imagery, were inspired by a visit to India and from classical Indian storybook illustrations. Over that I layered references to the Cavern Club (actual graffiti), to Abbey Road (crosswalk stripes), to Sergeant Pepper (colored horses) etc. The subtitle, “Eight Hooves to Hold Me”, refers to the movie “Help!”s subtitle, “Eight Arms to Hold Me”.

It is a Good Day to Die

Disraeli’s Fears

Steve Justice - Painting - Title: Disraeli’s Fears Material: oil on canvas Size: 46x62 Year: 2015 “When I want to read a novel I write one.” -- Benjamin Disraeli

Upstate Man

Steve Justice Painting Title: Upstate Man Material: oil on canvas Size: 60x48 Year: 2014 “We do not wish to destroy your religion, or take it from you. We only want to enjoy our own.” -- Handsome Lake This experiment in line and color describes an Ojibwe Indian as a mythical man in an inverted world, so that he shuffles across the sky in snowshoes, creating the Northern Lights in his wake. His lodge is built using blue tarp, surplus traffic signs and even a twisted flag, a sympathetic comment on life on the reservation.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Steve Justice Painting Title: West Virginia Woolfe Material: oil on wood Size: 36x24 Year: 2014 “When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke around me I am in darkness – I am nothing. I only come into existence when the plumber, or the horse dealer, or whoever it may be, says something which sends me alight. Then how lovely the smoke of my phrases is, rising and falling, flaunting and falling, upon red lobsters and yellow fruit, wreathing them into one beauty.” -- Virginia Woolf If Virginia Woolf looks depressed in photos, it’s because she frequently was. Privilege, talent and education make no difference when Churchill’s so-called “black dog” is on your trail. This painting’s split of positive and negative colors attempts to explain this circumstance and how Virginia produced such timeless brilliance in spite of it. The hillocks behind her are nothing but a cheap gimmick meant to justify this painting’s clever but misleading title.

Fender Bender: portrait of Leo Fender

Steve Justice Painting Title: Fender Bender: portrait of Leo Fender 7 Material: oil on canvas Size: 60x48 Year: 2014 “Music is going to break the way because music is a spiritual thing of its own. You can’t just cut out the perfect wave and take it home with you.” -- Jimi Hendrix In “Fender Bender”, I make Jimi Hendrix a supporting character in his own painting by focusing on his instrument rather than his athleticism in using it. Hendrix’s guitar, which he used to create, but then would famously destroy, was designed and built by Leo Fender, a simple working man with an unlikely interest in loud electric musical instruments. With a nod toward both patriotic and counter cultures in the late 1960s, I paint a semblance of an American flag into the background, rendered here in political convention television colors. The guitar-burning is Monterey, the flag is Woodstock, and those two concerts roughly bracketed Hendrix’s very brief time in the limelight. The 50 stars are actual stars seen in the heavens.

O’Keefe Magic

Steve Justice Painting Title: O’Keefe Magic Material: oil on canvas Size: 48x48 Year: 2014 I long ago came to the conclusion that even if I could put down accurately the thing I saw and enjoyed, it would not give the observer the kind of feeling it gave me. I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking for – not copy it. – Georgia O’Keefe I expected the desert to be a drab, barren environment, but I found it to be a place surrounded with wonder, where the art tracks down the artist rather than the other way around. Georgia O’Keefe didn’t have to go far for inspiration. She’s been accused of painting female genitalia into her work, so here I make a play at balancing the books.

Play Firebird!: portrait of Igor Stravinsky

Steve Justice Painting Title: To the Right of Spring: portrait of Igor Stravinsky Material: oil on canvas Size: 36x24 Year: 2014 “I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.” -- Igor Stravinsky I have seen these gold-green and gold-orange colors while meditating, and I suspect that these visuals have something to do with fertility and creative inspiration, so I use them here. On Igor’s jacket I employ the same pattern that appeared on the actual Rite of Spring dancers’ costumes.

Physics is Phun: portrait of Niels Bohr

Steve Justice Painting Title: Physics is Phun: portrait of Niels Bohr Material: oil on canvas Size: 60x60 Year: 2014 “The poet, too, is not so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.” -- Niels Bohr At Princeton there once were three offices in a row, occupied by the faculty members, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr. “Physics is Phun”, which was one of my physics teacher’s oft-repeated catch-phrases, is about high school physics and the oaken, blackboard darkness that served as its classroom. Niels Bohr was revered there, for his genius and opinions, as a young man and as an elder in his field. Using Spin-Art as a sketch tool, I created what appears to be a radiating splatter of chalk on a blackboard, as if that day’s lesson was on centrifugal force. A square format therefore made the most sense. The furniture is dappled with light as if from trees outside, with a composition book pattern.

Expecting to Fly: portrait of Neil Young

Steve Justice Painting Title: The Color of Smoke: portrait of Neil Young Material: oil on canvas Size: 54x54 Year: 2014 “Sometimes when I’m writing a song I can feel there’s other things in me that are not me. That’s why I hesitate to edit my songs. If it’s something I have to think about and contrive, work at, it’s usually not that good. My best work just comes through me. A lot of times what comes through me is coming from somewhere else … I think we’re all vehicles for each other.” -- Neil Young Neil Young takes leave of himself when he charges off on a guitar solo. In this painting, I resisted the cliche of depicting a guitar hero with abstract splashes, smears and slashes. I instead chose the arcane autobiographical and anthroposophical details and tendencies that Neil himself might use, including here a classic Americana decorative motif (cube quilts, Whitehall glass etc), in this case colored as sky, sepia and psychedelia. The title comes from a note I made to myself on one of my color studies.

Blue Bob #12 & #35

Steve Justice Painting Title: Blue Bob #12 & 35 Material: oil on canvas Size: 30x20 2013 “The songs were easy to write and seemed to float downstream with the current. It’s not like they’d been faint or far away — they were right there in my face, but if you’d look too steady at them, they’d be gone.” -- Bob Dylan

Anybody Here Seen My Good Friend Martin?

Steve Justice Painting Title: Anybody Here Seen My Good Friend Martin? Material: oil on wood Size: 30x30 Year: 2013 “When natural music is heightened and polished by art, there man first beholds and can with great wonder examine to a certain extent the great and perfect wisdom of God in his marvelous work of music.” -- Martin Luther The square wooden panel painted in gold is meant to suggest a Northern European alter-piece. The “94” refers to his 94 Theses.

God Shave the Queen

Steve Justice Painting Title: God Shave the Queen Material: oil on canvas Size: 72x48 Year: 2013 “Why say the poet and prophet are not often united? For if they are not they ought to be.” -- J.M.W. Turner When I was a toddler I had a dream so vivid that it still seems like a reality leak, in which I am in Westminster Abbey, witnessing Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. I remember noting that she seemed barely older than my baby sitter. Years later I visited England and became aware of an imbalance between the sexes in the workplace and in politics, with even a declaration by someone that Maggie Thatcher was not actually a woman. So I painted this portrait of Her Majesty sitting in what I guess is the Silly Room in a Westminster Abbey as painted in actual Martha Stewart colors. The 5-o’clock shadow and the title were an afterthought. Really.

And You Read Your Emily Dickinson

East St. Louis Buddha-loo: portrait of Duke Ellington

Steve Justice Painting Title: East St. Louis Buddha-loo: portrait of Duke Ellington 10 Material: oil on canvas Size: 60x48 Year: 2013 “I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.” -- Duke Ellington Duke Ellington’s superhuman inspiration and productivity are described here with rivers of fire and water in dialog with the universe. His hair is highlighted to suggest piano keys and to resemble the art found on vintage jazz sheet music. He wears a choir robe to remind us of the early musical workout so many black musicians received in the church. The face on the pencil is a nod to Max Fleischer, a sometimes client of the Duke. Anyone who has spent any time in grade school music class or choir practice can recognize the back of an upright piano. The title riffs on Ellington’s “East St. Louis Toodle-oo”.

Rust Belt Hero: portrait of Roberto Clemente

Steve Justice Painting Title: Rust Belt Hero: portrait of Roberto Clemente Material: oil on canvas Size: 58x48 Year: 2013 “When I wake up in the morning, I pray I am still sleeping.” -- Roberto Clemente Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente was baseball’s first Latino superstar. With his ascendancy the game became faster and the flat-footed Yankee-style of baseball became a thing of the past. Though his organization was (and still is) racially progressive in nature, Clemente had to deal with much of the same discrimination, miscommunication and cultural disconnect that other immigrants feel. In this painting he knows we’re here to watch him hit baseballs, something he does very well. The digital numerals before him hint at the new, electronic sport that lies ahead, but here the hero waits in hokey old Forbes Field, which is shattered into the colors of the Caribbean, of major league stadium sports, and of the flag of Puerto Rico.

You Don’t Know Joe Sibbitt

Steve Justice Painting Title: You Don’t Know Joe Sibbitt Material: oil on canvas Size: 30x24 Year: 2013 “There never was a great character who did not sometimes smash the routine regulations and make new ones for himself.” -- Andrew Carnegie Joe Sibbitt is a fictitious any-man in the blue-collar Pittsburgh I grew up in. Someone might actually know someone who knows him, since all Pittsburghers seem to be related by only 2-3 degrees of separation. The bigger-than-man machinery, the dirt, the rivers, the twinkling lights and the houses clinging to hillsides, were all things I grew up with and took for granted.

The Abduction of Clueless Joe Jackson

Steve Justice Painting Title: The Abduction of Clueless Joe Jackson 9 Material: oil on canvas Size: 51x51 Year: 2013 “I ain’t afraid to tell the world that it don’t take school stuff to help a fella play ball.” -- Shoeless Joe Jackson Gaze with sympathy at an illiterate savant who, in spite of his talents, found himself in circumstances beyond his simple understanding of the world (the “Black Sox Scandal”). Shoeless Joe Jackson struck out only 186 in 13 major league seasons – some of today’s players strike out that many times by August. In this painting, the unique analysis and geometry of baseball is reiterated through line work and the diamond format. Is that a renaissance light of inspiration over his head? Or is it a dunce cap? Or is it some sort of tractor beam? Is that hell below? We may never know.

Saint Stonewall of Shenanidoah

Steve Justice Title: Saint Stonewall of Shenanidoah Material: oil on canvas Size: 46x46 Year: 2013 “Mystery, mystery, is the secret to success.” -- Thomas L. “Stonewall” Jackson My ancestors fought in the Civil War for the North’s Virginia/West Virginia Volunteers, who had their asses kicked up and down the Shenandoah Valley by the crafty tactician, rebel mystic and symbol of “the cause”, Stonewall Jackson, here deified in Christ-pose with a heart of lemon. (Lemons were his favorite snack.) The battle flag of the secession states is subtly suggested in the stonewall clouds in the sky.

Kruschev at the Beach

Steve Justice Painting Title: Kruschev at the Beach Material: oil on canvas Size: 36x36 Year: 2013 “Progressive artists are faggots, traitors and agents of imperialism.” -- Nikita Kruschev It’s not Don Rickles so it must be Kruschev. “Kruschev at the Beach” is my out-take from all those photos of Nikita Kruschev staring dumbly at stuff while he was touring the U.S.

Culuster’s Last Stand

le: Culuster’s Last Stand Material: oil on canvas Size: 30x20 Year: 2010

A Reasonably Good Likeness of Erik Tuomela

Steve Justice Painting Title: A Reasonably Good Likeness of Erik Tuomela SOLD 12 Material: oil on canvas Size: 30x22 Year: 2009 “We fought for home, faith and fatherland.” -- Carl Gustav Mannerheim In World War 2, little Finland was backed into a courageous fight with a neighbor more than 50 times its size, the Soviet Union. My mother’s cousin Erik Tuomela left his blood on the snow. Behind him is painted a map showing the snow and lakes of eastern Finland. Or maybe it’s sky and smoke.

Show Me the Monet

Steve Justice Painting Title: Show Me the Monet Material: oil on canvas Size: 24x24 (x 4 panels) Year: 2004 “I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of themes to settle themselves in my brain. When I felt I had enough cards I determined to pass to action, and did so.” -- Claude Monet These 4 (differing) 2x2 panels are a remake of Monet’s iconic “haystack” series, simplified into 3 colors to communicate different seasons, times and moods. The paint surface is very rough with brush strikes, for greater authenticity.

Green Bodhisattva in Repose

Steve Justice Painting Title: Green Bodhisattva in Repose Material: oil on canvas Size: 64x54 Year: 2003 “In the mind there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and believe them to be true.” -- Buddha This is my first painting where I consciously centered the subject on its chakras. The subject I saw in Boston’s art museum, her color occurred to me while hiking in Sedona’s Boynton Canyon, and the stacked perspective in the background is classic Chinese.

Bear Bones

Steve Justice Painting Title: Bear Bones Material: oil on canvas Size: 24x30 Year: 2003

Saint Ambrose: portrait of Ambrose Bierce

Steve Justice Painting Title: Saint Ambrose: portrait of Ambrose Bierce 13 Material: oil on canvas Size: 66x48 Year: 2002 “imagination, n.: A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.” – Ambrose Bierce Ambrose Bierce looms large in my pantheon of creative rangers, with a career that began with Indiana farm boy, to wartime traumas while in the service of W.T. Sherman, to short story writer, to controversial San Francisco journalist extraordinaire, and finally, to his disappearance in Mexico while a correspondent embedded in Pancho Villa’s army. This is all dutifully reported in one way or another in the painting I call “St. Ambrose”. He is not to be confused with St. Ambrose, the Christian, who was also a scribe.

Sherman and Peabody

Steve Justice Painting Title: Sherman and Peabody Material: oil on canvas Size: 60x48 Year: 2001 “I find that I am sometimes so fascinated with painting that it amounts to pain to lay down the brush, placing me in doubt whether I had better stop now before it swallows all attention, to the neglect of my duties.” -- William Tecumseh Sherman In 1864 Sherman suckered John Bell Hood out from a great defensive position and commenced with destroying his army, right where you are presently standing. (If you’re in Midtown Atlanta.) Pictured here is a tense meeting between the seldom-patient Sherman and the ever-patient Mr. Peabody, by his Way-back (time) Machine. Choose your myths wisely.

El Sombrero es Rojo

Steve Justice Painting Title: El Sombrero es Rojo SOLD Material: oil on canvas Size: 30x72 Year: 2000 This painting is a distortion of a Jack Ruby sketch. It resembled, to me, a basic Spanish lesson when I stopped painting so as to show it, hence its title.

Pieta Kalevala; the Lamentation of Lemminkainen

Steve Justice Painting Title: Pieta Kalevala; the Lamentation of Lemminkainen Material: oil on canvas Size: 56x64 Year: 1998 “A song works across time the way a painting works across space … The song tells me what to do. The less my brain is involved, the more I trust the music. Often, I don’t know what the song is about until after it’s done, and not even always then.” -- Jean Sibelius This collision of earth and sky mythologies was inspired by my seeing Michelangelo’s delicate, seemingly lighter-than-air Pieta in Rome and by my study of Finland’s Kalevala mythology. Jesus and Lemminkainen were both mama’s boys who ran into trouble, died and were reborn, each in His/his own way. This canvas is shaped to suggest that it might have been “liberated” from a niche in a church during the Second World War, was hidden or lost, but has been rediscovered. The large mushroom in the background I saw on an enchanting hike in the woods in Marin County.

Still Mill

Steve Justice Painting Title: Still Mill SOLD Material: oil on canvas Size: 36x72 Year: 1997 This painting is a part of the Heinz collection.

Marlon Darlin’

Steve Justice Painting Title: Marlon Darlin’ SOLD Material: Oil on Canvas Size: 96x60 Year: 1996 This painting was commissioned for a high foyer, so I took a horizontal sketch based on a scene from “Last Tango in Paris”, and I stacked it multiple times to suggest a piece of broken movie film.

Seneca Sutra: portrait of Cornplanter

Steve Justice Painting Title: Seneca Sutra: portrait of Cornplanter Material: oil on canvas Size: 60x48 Year: 1996 “There is no easy way from earth to the stars.” – Seneca “Seneca Sutra” is an experiment in combining Western Indian and Eastern Indian elements in the same painting. The colors and stylized flames are seen on Himalayan murals. The subject here is the Seneca war chief, Cornplanter.

Pwitty Wips

Steve Justice Painting Title: Pwitty Wips Material: acrylic and oil on canvas Size: 24x30 Year: 1994 Description: A short story/description for each painting. My comments for “Doris Daydream” apply to this detail from that painting. My daughter contributed the title when she was little.

Saint Vince of Sycamore Hills

Steve Justice Painting Title: Saint Vince of Sycamore Hills Material: oil on canvas Size: 42x36 Year: 1993 Vince was my first dog, named after inlaws too numerous to mention. What do dogs dream about? Do they really dream when they’re sleeping and kicking their legs or, as some say, is all that just a physical release? Sometimes, when my dogs have awakened, I can tell that they have just been “someplace else” and they’re a little confused. For “St. Vince” I borrowed the half-shell from Sandro Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” and set it afloat on waves of suburban grass. The halo also came from the Uffizi. The smoke seen coming from my neighbor’s house represents smoke coming from my neighbor’s house, an actual event and a David Lynchian touch in the otherwise peaceful Sycamore Hills.

Ike on a Bike

Steve Justice Painting Title: Ike on a Bike SOLD Material: oil on canvas Size: 72x48 Year: 1993 “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” -- Dwight Eisenhower “Ike on a Bike”, an overlay of two iconic 50s personalities (Marlon Brando and Dwight Eisenhower), was purchased by an Army general.

Doris Daydream

Steve Justice Painting Title: Doris Daydream Material: acrylic and oil on canvas Size: 50x48 Year: 1992 “Vulgarity begins when imagination succumbs to the explicit.” -- Doris Day Calamity Jane actually more closely resembled k.d. lang than America’s sweetheart, Doris Day. On this painting I used both oil paint and fluorescent acrylic paint.

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?

Steve Justice Painting Title: Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? SOLD Material: oil on canvas Size: 60x46 Year: 1992 “McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled up.” -- Joseph McCarthy Two McCarthy’s, Joe and Charlie. This painting is now a part of the Butler collection.

Dharma Bum

Steve Justice Painting Title: Dharma Bum SOLD Material: oil on canvas Size: 72x48 Year: 1992 “Perfectly selfless, the beauty of it, the butterfly doesn’t take it as a personal achievement, he just disappears through the trees.” -- Jack Kerouac

Mohammed Dali

Steve Justice Painting Title: Mohammed Dali SOLD Material: oil on canvas Size: 42x54 Year: 1992 “A man who has no imagination has no wings.” -- Mohammed Ali

The Long Rider at Dawn or Sunset

Oil on Canvas

Steve Justice Painting Title: Oil on Canvas Material: oil on canvas Size: 48x54 Year: 1991 “Oil on Canvas” shows John Peters, a British airman who was captured and flaunted on TV by Iraq at the beginning of the first Gulf War.

Where Have You Gone, Pascual Perez?

Steve Justice Painting Title: Where Have You Gone, Pascual Perez? Material: oil on canvas Size: 48x72 Year: 1991 This painting looks at our minorities and how they are expected to play up to their stereotype or be declared a rebel or an outsider. Think of Yogi Berra and Joe Dimaggio. The title is borrowed from Paul Simon’s “Mrs. Robinson”, altered here to suit my needs.

Romulus and Remus

Steve Justice Painting Title: Romulus and Remus Material: oil on canvas Size: 60x60 Year: 1991 “I know that life isn’t a world’s fair of delights, but I think it should be and hope it will be.” -- Walt Disney If you attempt this at home, make sure you pet the she-wolf first. “Romulus and Remus” is rare for me in that it was as title-driven as it was image-driven. This is another train-wreck between classic and modern myths of two different cultures (taste notwithstanding). Think Rome + Florence + Disney. Here I honor the possibility of black man being the original man, in spite of his relegation throughout history. The past is not what it used to be. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.

Jack, Maybe

Steve Justice Painting Title: Jack, Maybe SOLD Material: acrylic on canvas Size: 24x24 Year: 1991 Yes, this is Jack Ruby.

Mer Mediterranee

Steve Justice Painting Title: Mer Mediterranee SOLD Material: oil on canvas Size: 30x48 Year: 1991 “Mer Mediterranee” depicts my experience of the Mediterranean Sea on the Riviera. The water was sticky, the air looked putrid and the unsculpted gravel beach dropped off into the sea so sharply that I actually had to save a child who fell in. The frame is made from actual shells, painted gold and silver.

Untitled

Steve Justice Painting Title: Untitled Material: oil on canvas Size: oil on canvas Year: 1990 “Untitled” started out as a portrait of Bugsy Siegel having a bad day, and wound up being something like an unknown soldier of everyday life. I used chilly colors to suggest a cold room with way too much fluorescent lighting.

Zhou and Dick

Steve Justice Painting Title: Zhou and Dick SOLD 19 Material: oil on canvas Size: 64x72 Year: 1990 “One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.” – Zhou Enlai “Zhou and Dick” was conceived following a trip to Beijing in 1989, after the dust at Tienanmen Square settled. In fact, I was 1 of only 3 people visiting the Square the day after the army left. I recalled Nixon’s outreach to China in the 1970s when I saw him there on Chinese TV, meeting with Deng Xaiping. I had not seen Nixon in years, and he looked grayer and even more wooden than he was when he supped with the genius of politics and diplomacy, Zhou Enlai.

Ytic Kroy Wen

Steve Justice Painting Title: Ytic Kroy Wen SOLD Material: oil on canvas Size: 70x48 Year: 1990 “When the music comes to me —‘the music of the spheres, the music that surpasseth understanding’— that has nothing to do with me, ‘cause I’m just a channel. The only joy for me is for it to be given to me, and to transcribe it like a medium … Those moments are what I live for.” -- John Lennon From working class hero, to proto hippie, to steel and glass New Yorker. This painting was purchased by a New Yorker.

Fool Moon Over Half Dome

Steve Justice Painting Title: Fool Moon Over Half Dome SOLD Material: oil on canvas Size: 56x72 Year: 1990 “We all move on the fringes of eternity and are sometimes granted vistas through the fabric of illusion.” -- Ansel Adams “Fool Moon” is a colorization of a classic Ansel Adams subject, with a remark on our misguided environmental attitudes.

Wonton Violence

Steve Justice Painting Title: Wonton Violence Material: oil on canvas Size: 44x72 Year: 1989 I was not there when it happened, and I do not pretend that I was, but I did see it on television.

A portrait of the Artist as a Young Children

Steve Justice Painting Title: A portrait of the Artist as a Young Children SOLD Material: oil on canvas Size: 30x120 Year: 1989 I Warholesqely repeat a drawing from an early photo of me having a bad day at the Allegheny County Fair, to make a comment on abundance and entitlement in America’s postwar years.

Aiti Pullankanssa

Steve Justice Painting Title: Aiti Pullankanssa Material: oil on canvas Size: 72x60 Year: 1989 This is a portrait of my Finnish grandmother. Pulla is Finnish coffee bread.

Surreal Thing

Steve Justice Painting Surreal Thing, #2

Lisa Mona

Steve Justice Painting Title: Lisa Mona SOLD Material: oil on canvas Size: 35x24 Year: 1988 “O painter, take care lest the greed for gain prove a stronger incentive than renown in art, for to gain this renown is a far greater thing than the renown of riches.” -- Leonardo da Vinci The actual Mona Lisa is this same size. The frame was made using actual pasta.

We Were on the Threshold of a New Frontier

Steve Justice Painting Title: We Were on the Threshold of a New Frontier SOLD Material: oil on canvas Size: 54x72 Year: 1988 “I don’t know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.” --John Glenn The early astronauts were be-heroed by every school kid when I was young, but I’d be hard pressed to name any after about 1972.

I Was Here I Am: portrait of Quanah Parker

Steve Justice Title: Comanche: portrait of Quanah Parker Material: oil on canvas Size: 66x66 Year: 1988 This painting was prompted by a dream in which a Native American questioned me as to why I was on his land.