Title: Mer Mediterranee
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 30×48
Year: 1991 SOLD

All men owe honor to the poets – honor and awe, for they are the dearest to the Muse who puts upon their lips the ways of life.   – Homer  (the Odyssey)

“Mer Mediterranee” reports on my experience at the Mediterranean shore while visiting Nice on the French Riviera.  The water was sticky, the air looked greenly sulphuric on the horizon, and the un-sculpted gravel beach dropped off so sharply into the waves that I actually had to save a child who fell off the beach and into the wine-dark sea.  The child’s mother, already irked at some Japanese businessmen who were trying to photograph her in her pride, was less grateful than I expected her to be.   Sea la vie say the old folks.

This painting is now a part of the Star Collection of Artistic Masterpieces (S.C.A.M.) of Fishersville, Virginia.

 

 

 

 

Title: Untitled
Material: oil on canvas
Size: oil on canvas
Year: 1990

We only kill each other.     – Bugsy Siegel

“Untitled” started out as a portrait of Bugsy Siegel having a bad heir day and wound up as something like an Unknown Soldier of everyday life.

When Bugsy Siegel was shot in the head in his living room, it is said that his eyeballs ricocheted around the room like a couple coked-up Superballs.  They were later found in a fish tank and behind a sofa cushion.

Chicago mobster Sam Giancana was also shot in the head, in his kitchen, presumably by a trusted insider.  He was found with a mop jammed down his throat, so never think hitmen don’t have a sense of humor.  I was once mistaken as Giancana’s assassin, I believe.  I used to jog in Oak Park, Chicago, and my route took me past the homes of Frank Lloyd Wright, Ernest Hemmingway and, I soon learned, Sam Giancana.  As I was jogging one breezy June day, two men in a car in a terrible hurry skidded up to me.  They both had standard issue ‘70s cop moustaches, pistols on the seat between them, and a phone in their car.  I had never seen a phone in a car before — that was Dick Tracy stuff in 1975.  “Is your name Peter?” one asked me.  Huh?  “Are you looking for your pet parrot?” asked the other.  No and no.  He said a bad word and pounded the dashboard, and the car peeled away.  It happened that fast.  The next day I read in the Chicago Tribune that Sam Giancana had been whacked, about a block from there.  Years later I learned that the killer had panicked and hidden himself in some bushes in a park overnight, and could not be located.  I think the men in the car were supposed to pick up the shooter, but couldn’t find him.

In “Untitled”, I chose to use putrid colors with names known only to Charon the ferryman, to suggest a cold, lifeless hospital basement room with way too much fluorescent lighting.  Colors like these need more playing time, so I sometimes oblige them.  But, if you’re thinking that I’ve really painted myself into a coroner this time, you may be right.

 

 

Title: Zhou and Dick
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 64×72
Year: 1990 SOLD

One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.     – Zhou Enlai

“Zhou and Dick” was conceived (as was our daughter) following a trip to Beijing in 1989, after the dust at Tiananmen Square had settled.  In fact, my wife and I were 2 of the 3 visitors on the 100-acre plaza when it was reopened the day after the army left.  The third was our guide.  We had watched the PLA’s convoys roar past our hotel in the middle of the night, with soldiers standing in the backs of troop carriers and dump trucks.   I pictured them being unceremoniously dumped into their camps at the end of their trip, like the truckloads of cabbage that were being dumped on the sidewalks throughout the city.  It was free for the taking, and everyone loaded up.  Due to miscalculation, too much had been planted that year, and the People were being told it was their patriotic duty to eat more cabbage. While at Tiananmen, we were granted a look at the Great Helmsman himself (Mao), in his mortified state.   They could have made him look as beautiful as Snow White, but instead he looked like a half-eaten plate of General Tsao’s pork, so I know it was really him.

Nixon was also in Beijing when we were there, and we saw him on Chinese television, chatting with Deng Xiaoping one evening, right after the Grain Report.  Tonnage was up and the future looked great.  I hadn’t seen Tricky Dick in a number of years and he looked frail and gray.  I was reminded of Nixon’s outreach to China in 1972, when the clumsy, wooden leader of the Free World supped with China’s ailing genius of politics and diplomacy, Zhou Enlai.  Here were the greatest politician that ever lived and one of the weirdest.

I here include details from my own dinners in China, with the cigarette pack begging for a Raymond Loewy make-over, and the orange pop, bottomless juice glasses of thin local beer, mystery broths and a graceful and smiling host.  The table cloth is red in my retelling of the event.  Need I explain why?

Title: Ytic Kroy Wen 
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 70×48
Year: 1990 SOLD

When 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

liverpool john ono

sergeant pepper dreamweaver

in new york city

That was a haiku poem.  People think all you need is three lines of 5,7 & 5 syllables to qualify as a Haiku, but it also needs to balance on a pause.  And, the 5-7-5 rules applies to Haikus written in Japanese, but that might translate, for example, to 7, 10 and 2 syllables in English.  So, get that chopstick out of your ass and loosen up a little on that 5-7-5 rule.  I’m paraphrasing Alan Ginsburg when I advise this, by the way (btw).  But don’t listen to me.

This painting was sold to a builder on Long Island who prefers to remain anonymous, named Vinny “The Hammer” Risotto.

 

 

 

Title: Fool Moon Over Half Dome
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 56×72
Year: 1990 SOLD

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 black-and-white Ansel Adams subject, with red added to turn my own painting into a comment on our misguided environmental attitudes.

John Muir once ingeniously opined that one precipice at Yosemite was prone to major avalanche every 100 years, by noting that all the fallen trees at the bottom were 100 years old.  They grew up together and they went down together.

This painting went missing with ten others, when the owner of the gallery where they were being shown had to flee creditors.  I’d rented a truck to remove and ship home my paintings back home, but I found the gallery padlocked and empty.  After receiving an anonymous phone tip later that same day, I located the paintings in the basement of a Mexican restaurant, with one painting broken in half and this one punctured clear through.  I ultimately repaired and sold both paintings.  Months later I bumped into the gallerist again, only he had gone to extremes to alter his appearance by growing a goatee, wearing glasses, and re-shaping his hairline – he was now bald on the top of his head with the world’s worst comb-over.

They say there’s a redwood tree near Yosemite (redwoods tend to stick together and never stray very far) that is a half mile tall and older than China, but they haven’t found it yet.  In fact, we’re not really sure who “they” are.  So where does that leave us?

We all have our sad vanities to pursue.  Or avoid.

 

 

 

Title: Wonton Violence
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 44×72
Year: 1989

 

I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.     – Lyndon Johnson

In 1994, I was confronted at a Columbus, Ohio solo show of mine by a Vietnam veteran who demanded to know how I had the audacity to portray a satirical scene from a war I did not attend.  I explained to him that this was my own, twelve-year-old’s evening news experience of seeing the same event, but backwards and in flip-flops, and he was satisfied enough to let me off with a stern warning.  A short time later, a carpenter offered me sex in exchange for the same painting, but I sure took advantage of him – I sold him a forgery!  What a sucker!  I’m lying, by the way — Gallant politely declined the offer.

I had another, more significant encounter with a Vietnam veteran once on the University of Cincinnati campus, where I was studying industrial design.  My college career had gotten off to a phenomenal stat, but after a few years, the grind and the utter nonexistence of any social life, brought on by my frequent co-op (work-study program) absences, had begun to affect my mood.  One day I plopped down on a bench between classes and stared at the ground, feeling sorry for myself, feeling I could not go on, when a Vietnam vet sat on the other end of the bench and lit a cigarette.  We knew who these guys were – they were shaggy and bearded, looked to be 25 going on 55 years of age, and wore pieces of army surplus clothing.  This one smoke silently for a minute, then, without my saying a word, threw his cigarette down, got up in my face and yelled, “Goddammit, are you gonna do something about it, or are you just gonna sit there?”  He stormed off, and I knew I had nothing to complain about.  My academic career was immediately back on track.

I have visited Ho Chi Minh City (now known as Saigon) and I’ve stood exactly where this original, iconic photo was taken, and I almost got run over by a tuk-tuk.

 

 

Title: Aiti Pullankanssa
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 72×60
Year: 1989

 

The major concern was to create a monument which would have lasting significance and would be a landmark of our time.  Neither an obelisk nor a rectangular box nor a dome seemed right on this site or for this purpose.  But here, at the edge of the Mississippi River, a great arch did seem right.     — Eero Saarinen

Me and my Eero.

Aiti was my Finnish grandmother.  ‘Aiti’ means ‘Mother’, ‘pulla’ is Finnish coffee bread, ‘kansa’ means ‘with her’, and ‘molopaa’ means ‘dick-head’.  So “Aiti Pullankansaa” means “Mother with Her Coffee Bread”*.   But I speak none of that tangled coat-hanger of a language, and Finns rarely speak at all, so reality in Aiti’s dark, wooden house tended to slowly spiral into a point of nothing like a snake consuming itself tail-first.  But there are no snakes in Finland, unless it can be proven otherwise by some smart zoologist.  None that I know of, anyhow.  I’m certain there are no grasshoppers, thanks to St. Urho, who drove them out.  This is well-documented.  Now if someone could drive the dogs out of West Philly.

Unless we wanted to watch baseball with my grandfather Ukki (“Grandfather”) we could read a book on the porch or, if we were really bored, wander up to the Fineview schoolyard and sportingly present ourselves to be beaten senseless by the Irish city kids for mocking their inarticulate attempts to engage us verbally.  While enjoying the fine view of the gray Pittsburgh sky with our backs on the broken asphalt, of course.

*Finnish words can be ridiculously long, because they string all of a noun’s modifiers together into one extended, seamless word.  For instance, the English phrase “even with its quality of not being possible to be made irrational” becomes the Finnish word “epajarjestelmallistyttamattmyydel-lansakaan”.  It seems unfair that Latin is a dead language, but Finnish lives.

 

 

Title: I Was Here I Am: portrait of Quanah Parker
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 66×66
Year: 1988

This painting was prompted by a dream in which a Native American questioned me as to why I was on his land.