Seneca Sutra: portrait of Cornplanter
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 60×48
Year: 1996

There is no easy way from earth to the stars.   – Seneca

In what on the surface might be mistaken as another cloud of so much New Age psychobabble (quoting an ancient Stoic doesn’t help my case), “Seneca Sutra” is an experiment in combining Western Indian and Eastern Indian elements in the same painting.  I decided that I would accept, as the outcome, the process rather than the product, and did I ever.  I pretty much had to.

The Native American subject of this painting is Cornplanter, the great and powerful Seneca war chief.  The Western Door, as the Seneca were called, was responsible for Haudenosaunee (Iroquois League) dealings with Ohio and beyond, and they were badder than the whole rest of the League combined.  They once tracked down and exterminated the entire Erie Indian tribe because the Eries had abetted fugitives from Seneca law.  There are no Erie Indians today.  Other Great Lakes tribes like the Sauk, Fox and Potawatomie the Seneca bulldozed further West, and this too included the Lakota, who remained friends with and bought guns from the French in the East, while acquiring horses from the Pawnee and the Spanish to the West, and became the formidable mounted warriors that they were.  The Seneca also had the audacity to sell Ohio, which was Shawnee land, to the US government.  It was not theirs to sell, but the Western Door swung both ways then, and it hit lots of people on the ass on their way out.  As they knew, you’re either on Turtle Island or you’re not.

In this painting, I use Himalayan mural colors, with flames of war doubling as flames of dharma, behind the warrior chief Cornplanter.  His feathers are the colors of prayer flags.

Cornplanter rests in a cemetery that was moved from the Allegheny River valley to higher ground when the valley was flooded to create Kinzua Reservoir.  He has an imposing monument, but all around him lie hundreds of Senecas with gravestones that read “Unknown”.

 

Title: Saint Vince of Sycamore Hills
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 42×36
Year: 1993

Inspiration demands the active cooperation of the intellect joined with enthusiasm, and it is under such conditions that marvelous conceptions, with all that is excellent and divine, come into being.     – Giorgio Vasari

Vince was my first dog, named after at least three Italian in-laws.  What do dogs dream about?  Are they really dreaming when we see them kicking, woofing and twitching, or as some say, is all that just some kind of general physical release?  When my dogs have awakened following a nap, I can sometimes tell that they have just been someplace else and their present whereabouts confuses them.  Dogs may know what time it is, and they know this by smell alone, but they never know what day it is.  They punch the timeclock and they don’t complain, so never betray their trust in you.

For “St. Vince”, I borrowed the half-shell from Sandro Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” and set it afloat on bounding waves of freshly mown suburban grass.  The halo was also borrowed from Florence’s Uffizi Museum.  The smoke seen coming from my neighbor’s house represents smoke coming from my neighbor’s house, an actual event and a David Lynchian “Blue Velvet” touch in the otherwise serene Middle American Columbus Ohio.  (The damage was minor and no-one was hurt.)

 

 

Title: Doris Daydream
Material: acrylic and oil on canvas
Size: 50×48
Year: 1992

Vulgarity begins when imagination succumbs to the explicit.     – Doris Day

Calamity Jane bore no semblance to her portrayer in film, America’s Sweetheart, Doris Day.  Actually, Lee Marvin would have been more suited for the part, but let’s not judge the calamitous.

I used both oil paint and fluorescent acrylic paint on this painting.  You know– DAY-glo colors?  Get it ?

 

Title: Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? SOLD
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 60×46
Year: 1992

 

McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled up.       – Joe McCarthy

… Or maybe with its pants pulled down.

 

Here I portray two McCarthy’s during the communist witch hunts of the 1950s, Charlie and Joe, both of them dummies, with Charlie playing the part of Joe’s uber-patriotic sidekick Roy Cohn, goading Joe, prodding him, correcting him, egging him on, trying to talk even more sense out of his head.  Joe’s glass is either half empty or half full.  What’s in it, Joe?  Vodka?  Gin?  We don’t know, because Joe pleads the fifth.

This painting is now a part of Youngstown’s Butler Institute’s collection, which also includes work by O’Keefe, Cassatt, Sargent, Pinkham, Homer, Hopper, Rauchenberg, Close, Segal, Bellows and Warhol.  A bunch of big shots, yes, but none of them ever sang a duet with Judy Garland, as I have.

I was maybe 5 years old, and she was to appear at a department store in a short scene supposedly from the Wizard of Oz, but set in a fanciful snowscape, since it was October (of 1961) and Christmas was coming, eventually.  There was fake snow and a candy-striped North Pole (because that’s what it really looks like, but much larger).   The rest of the cast consisted of a fake Toto with a scarf and a sidekick in a polar bear suit.

Judy was very abrupt and was obviously displeased to be there.  And she looked rough — I remember thinking that they promised us Dorothy but delivered the Wicked Witch.  Judy sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and started to offer the mic to us kiddies so that we could sing along.  My turn lasted no more than 10 seconds — she impatiently yanked the mic from my trembling little hands when she realized I didn’t know the lyrics and moved on to the next kid.  My relief was greater than my shame, but my career was ruined.  I couldn’t even get a gig in Peoria after that.

Title: The Long Rider at Dawn or Sunset 
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 24×72
Year: 1991 SOLD

We were so far back in the woods, they almost had to pipe in sunlight.   — Roy Rogers

“The Long Rider” is a portrait of Roy Rogers, Trigger’s lifelong friend-come- taxidermist, here stretched wide as the western sky.  Yep.

My very young daughter scribbled something in the lower corner of the canvas with a crayon, which I traced with paint to serve as my signature.  What does it mean?  I don’t know — what does mean mean?  I don’t know that either.  We’d have to ask a meanie.  But, at the end of the day, the sun sets, and we always get a new one the next day from Africa.  Hacuna matata.  And happy trails.