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

It comes blundering over the / boulders at night, it stays

frightened outside the / range of my campfire

I go to meet it at the / edge of the light.     – Gary Snyder (How Poetry Comes to Me)

This painting is a collision of 2 paintings.  One is a double-inversion of a Half Dome cartoon that I drew and painted long ago, that I called “Fool Moon Over Half Dome”, and the other is a portrait of Beat poet, Zen Buddhist and environmental activist Gary Snyder, sitting on his meditation cushion like a mountain among mountains.  Things become complicated as Gary levitates, the moon occurs in both the foreground and the background, and the scene swirls seamlessly into an asymmetrical, mad, reeling yin yang karmic, dharmic wheel, man.  Look at it go!

The background style and colors are influenced by National Park Service poster art.  The gold veins represent the gold veins of the California Gold Rush and also Japanese wabi sabi (kintsugi), which is the celebration of flaws, as in filling cracks in pottery with solid gold.  All cracks aren’t bad, you know.  Cracks are sometimes how the light gets in, and crackpots can be interesting, in reasonable doses.  Liking one doesn’t mean you have to like them all, so I hope we can still be friends after this.

Don’t ever let anyone try to tell you that being a tree hugger is a bad thing.  In fact, recoil in genuine (or feigned, if it’s all you’ve got) horror if they do.  Tree hugging is a noble thing.  We should all be tree huggers, and tree hugger huggers, and even tree hugger hugger huggers.

 

 

Title: Oaklahoma!: Portrait of Oscar Hammerstein
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 48×68
Year: 2016

It must be understood that the musician is just as much an author as the man who writes the words.  He expresses the story in his medium just as the librettist expresses the story in his.          – Oscar Hammerstein

Here is a creative talent who handled both lyrics and libretto deftly and memorably.  He knew how to make the inessential into the indispensable and recreated American musical theater, one section, row and seat at a time.

I allowed the subject to settle into his being a minor character in his own portrait.  Here you can barely see Hammerstein’s face – some portrait, you may sniff.  He could almost be mistaken for Drew Carey, were he not wearing the costumes from four of his own musicals, “The King and I, the Sound of Music, Oklahoma and South Pacific”.  Why four?  I don’t know, but you can see he’s drawn the first four strokes of a Star of David.  Another 4.  Four must be today’s number.  The subject(s) emerges from the black & white, burn & dodge photographic gloom of mid mid-century Life Magazine America, and graces the technicolor screen.

The woodgrain in the center of the painting is nothing but a cheap contrivance on my part to justify the mis-spelt title “OAKLAHOMA!”  A stretch, perhaps you say, but no artist knows how to call It down from the heavens every time he needs it.

 

 

 

Title: William Tell Overshare: portrait of William Burroughs
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 60×24
Year: 2016

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change and not political legislators, who implement change after the fact.     – William Burroughs

When he was living in Mexico, Beat author and gun enthusiast William Burroughs blew his wife’s brains out while trying to shoot an apple off the top of her head, William Tell style, in a drunken demonstration of his marksmanship.  He was acquitted when he was judged to have been way too drunk at the time to aim straight.

His pose here is similar to the man’s pose on police gun range targets — full frontal with elbow out — and the composition is as mathematically disciplined as a Burroughs business machine (the fortune to which he was an heir), with the background split into strata by half and then half again.  Each stratum bears arms (they have that right) representing clouds, foliage and magma, in what at first suggests mural art of the Yucatan, but may also be a cross-section of the earth and sky themselves.

This painting is painted on a recycled door, which suits Burroughs’ proportions and mental wanderlust to a tea.

Title: Immaculate Perception: Portrait of Aldous Huxley
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 28×28
Year: 2016     SOLD

The purified language of science, or even the richer purified language of literature, will never be adequate to the given-ness of the world.    

– Aldous Huxley

This is simply a retelling of Huxley’s bicycle story from his book “Doors of Perception”, in as much detail and economy as 4 square feet can support.

In his story, Aldous ingests a powerful hallucinogen and mayhem ensues.  In fact, he barely made it home.

His normally black-and-white visage has here gone almost full color.  The sparkle and dazzle of the background is formed by the spokes of a bicycle wheel, and even his ever-present nerd glasses have gone two-wheeler.

Huxley also wrote “Brave New World”, which most people have never read.

Title: Herman’s Big Adventure: portrait of Herman Hesse
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 50×36
Year: 2016

I have ceased to question stars and books;  I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.     – Herman Hesse

I have read Herman Hesse’s thinnest book, Siddhartha, represented here in Herman’s Big Adventure through the liberal use of waterlilies.  From another book of his, I painted in the sky the Steppenwolf, borrowing iconic album art of the 1960s band of the same name.  (Like a true nature’s child, he was born to be wild.)  These visuals serve as background and foreground, and their roles and boundaries are uncertain, as they run together and occupy space both in front of and behind the subject.

The Golden Proportion, also referred to as the Golden Ratio, has been observed in nature and used in art and architecture forever.  The exact ratio is .618034 to 1.00.   I always thought that that was simply our natural visual field, which is why it feels so normal to us, and I thought George Eastman thought so too.   Therefore, I also thought the Ratio cannot work in a vertical format.  I have in the past been the Golden Proportion’s biggest critic, usually dismissing it as coincidence, but my draftsmanship in Herman’s Big Adventure revealed to me that the eccentric composition I intuited in this painting almost precisely matches the science of the Golden Proportion.  I celebrate this with a gold spiral, arcing across the painting with friendly German precision.  A little torsion now and then never hurts.

Do you like his tie?  Who else has a tie like that?  Peewee Herman perhaps?  As in Peewee’s Big Adventure?  Again, is it plan, tendency or coincidence?  I don’t know — that’s why I’m asking you.   As I’ve never said before, some get the calling but others get the itch.

 

Title: Who Knows: Portrait of Whoopi Goldberg
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 36×24
Year: 2016    SOLD

Everything for me is visual.  That’s just how my head works.     – Whoopi Goldberg

This commission shows Whoopi Goldberg leaning on a motorcycle in Brando’s “Wild One” pose, with Johnny’s trophy replaced with Whoopi’s Oscar, and his leather jacket changed to The Color Purple, in reference to Whoopi’s first movie role.  The “x” motifs, used here as stars, clouds and patches, were derived from plan views of the New York City housing projects that Whoopi grew up in and worked hard to put behind her.

The title comes from a question I was once asked that I couldn’t answer, that being “What’s the title?”  Just like Stephen Stills once announced to his band Buffalo Springfield, “I’ve written a new song, for what it’s worth.”  Thus, it was named “For What It’s Worth”.

I’m not sure what else I can tell you that I don’t already know.  I think something’s happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear.

 

 Green Man: Portrait of Ralph Vaughn Williams
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 28×28
Year: 2016

I don’t know whether I like it, but it is what I meant.  – Ralph Vaughn Williams

Quoth Ralph about his Fourth Symphony, which followed his Third Symphony.  The Fourth comes across as being violent and more tergent than the Third (aka “Pastoral”) Symphony, I’m guessing because he forgot to add detergent this time.  He had a privileged upbringing in an open-minded family, but shitty experiences as a World War 1 medic fucked him up, as they had F. Scott Fitzgerald, Walt Disney, and Ernest Hemmingway, all heavy drinkers, btw.  (No one knows what ever became of Hemmingway.)  SO, faith, light, and heaven had become doubt, shadow, and hell, much like the fortunes of Manchester United after Sir Alex Ferguson left.  Things brightened up again when RVW took a new muse in Ursula Wood a few years later, and he continued to write music until he was 185 years old.

England was in Ralph Vaughn Williams’ blood (not booze – see above) and his love of the art of ordinary people, choral music especially (note that England’s strongest creativities are mainly verbal), inflected Williams’ music with folk culture so much so that he insisted on his name being pronounced per tradition as “Rafe”.  His timing was impeccable, so nobody pecced it.  Brits were not eager to keep listening to German music through the World War 2 years.  RVW is credited with weaning England from Continental Europe’s musical traditions (think Handel or Mendelsohn) and enabling England to grow her own.  For this he rests in Westminster Cathedral.

I was introduced to Ralph Vaughn Williams as I was walking through a meadow in Wales one day drear, when I felt his music seeping from the ground like spring water and entering my half-blind and legless body.  I recalled RVW’s “Greensleeves Fantasy” and I made the connection.  So here is portrayed Mother Nature’s Son, a living part of England’s lush Arcadian tradition.  He is the Green Man.  I am the Green Man.  We are the Green Men.  Goo goo ga job.

 

 

HH14: Portrait of the Dalai Lama
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 48×30
Year: 2016

There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy.  Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; my philosophy is kindness. – the Dalai Lama

His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama (Tenzing Gyatso) is depicted here in his maturity but as wearing the vestments of a very young Tibetan monk.  He was identified as being the Heir to the title of Dalai Lama at age 2, following a series of tests and hunches, but he actually led Tibet only after they faced their direst challenge when he was 15.  As secular leader, he and his brother the secretary-of-state (age 17) traveled to Beijing to plead Tibet’s case for independence before Mao Zedong and his brains, Zhou Enlai.  For perspective, when I was 15 my biggest worry was how I can sneak soiled clothing into the washer without my mother knowing.  But there is no perspective in this painting.  Maybe a little.  If you spot some, thangka for noticing, though I’m sure you’re wrong.

The double line-work describes a double He, with one on the outside and one on the inside, one before and one behind, one above and one below.  There is never just one of anything, and there are always two, but they’re both the same thing.  Trust me when I say that – I’m a Gemini.  The double linework also refers to 14’s dual role as both religious leader and secular leader of his troubled nation.

The center of the painting is anchored by the Dalai Lama’s heart and praying hands.  His slightly eccentric attitude suggests his unbiased attentiveness and his capacity for playfulness.   He is buttressed on both sides by the Himalayas.  In the background, Tibet’s flag is depicted, complete with its three gold borders with one missing.  This gesture is a three-sided embrace of their Buddhism, but with one side left open to accept whatever else there may be.  Imagine acceptance as a country’s policy.  It’s easy if you try.

 

 

Title: Hell With It’s Pants On: Portrait of Ty Cobb
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 36×24
Year: 2016 SOLD

Out of my way, Ice Wagon, I’m coming home!     — Ty Cobb

From Ty Cobb, an artist can learn to get out of the way of your subject, or it might run you over.

In this commission, I chose to suggest a vintage baseball card of the talented and criminally aggressive Detroit Tigers outfielder, Ty Cobb, and to do so through proportion, pose and color.  I bring an ordinarily static subject to life with him coming unstuck, ducking and reaching beneath and beyond the card’s own border.

Ty Cobb, aka “The Georgia Peach”, was as Southern as Coca-Cola, and was in fact an early and wealthy shareholder of the same, so I incorporated the logo, maybe on the leftfield wall.  For a baseball’s-eye view of the scene, I elongated the ball itself, Anime-style, to suggest dynamism, and maybe to presage the Internationalism of the sport.  The ball appears less monolithic when I use two tones, one being the tan of an antique baseball (in this case with Cobb’s autograph), and the other being the clay-rubbed sheen of a fresh baseball.

My client at first thought this image didn’t look much like Ty Cobb, forcing me to ask him “Then who do you think it doesn’t look like Ty Cobb?”  I had him there.  Strike three!

 

 

Title: The Dubliner:  Portrait of James Joyce
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 72×38
Year: 2015

There is a certain resemblance between the mystery of the Mass and what I am trying to do …  to give people a kind of intellectual or spiritual pleasure by converting the bread of everyday life into something that has a permanent artistic life of its own …   for their mental, moral and spiritual uplift.     – James Joyce

I sometimes read an annotated Finnegan’s Wake before I work, when I want to stretch my head and crack loose adhesions.  I’ve tried alcohol but booze talks back and loses all judgment when it’s been drinking.  Meditation is effective, but meditation plus dark chocolate-covered coffee beans is faster.

James Joyce wrote about the Catholic church with some criticism, but he was fully aware of its powerful draw and influence in Irish life, so he knew to hedge his bet.  In his stream-of-consciousness narratives he captures perfectly the wandering mind of a wayward Christian hoping not to get caught, which I attempt to capture here, in the format and drab coloration of a classic Guinness pub poster.  These posters are obscure, because if you’ve never been to an Irish pub, you may never have seen such a poster, or if you have been to an Irish pub, you may not remember seeing such a poster.  They rarely see the light of day.

So here James Joyce sits in a confessional or two, fancying a vision of a pint of Guinness before him.  His tie is tri-colored, first in Irish orange-white-green and then in English red-white-blue, in a reference to the two nation’s disfunctional relationship.

Sometimes you get what you pray for and sometimes you don’t.