Title: His Cold, Dead Hands: portrait of Charlatan Heston
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 60×44
Year: 2020

I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.  – Charlton Heston  (on the first anniversary of the Columbine massacre)

Heston, we have a problem.  This painting began as Charlton Heston in his NRA*  leadership sole, brandishing an assault rifle, while also playing his signature movie role as Moses and carrying not the Ten Commandments, but rather the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which briefly and vaguely outlines our right to bear the Second Amendment of the Constitution.  My working title was Camoses.

Then occurred the awful murder of 11 worshipers at The Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha in my hometown of Pittsburgh, during Shabbat services.   As usual, all the NRA did was dig in their cowboy boot heels on the issues of firearm ownership and regulation.  This painting evolved from there.   If you don’t believe in evolution, then the painting Stevolved from there, and being a religious painting, I had no qualms about putting some time into it.

Compositionally, you’ll notice that the painting is divided into three horizontal bands created by two overlapping squares, with all sorts of exciting activity crammed within.  Perspective is rolled flat, like Chinese landscape painting.  Or a Grandma Moses painting.  Of her own work, she said “I paint from the top down.  First the sky, then the mountains, then the hills, then the cattle, then the people,” and her paintings looked like it.  Unlike me, she never painted a religious subject, insisting that she “would not paint something we know nothing about”.

*not to be confused with the short-lived Depression-era National Recovery Administration, which was headed by General Hugh S. “Ironpants” Johnson, who didn’t want the job anyhow.  Why he was called Ironpants is anyone’s guess.  He later supervised WPA projects in New York City while working for another Moses – Robert Moses.  See how history gets all stuck together?

 

Title: Wobbly: portrait of Joe Hill Last Night
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 48×48
Year: 2020

A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over.  And I maintain that if a person can put a few common sense facts into a song and dress them up in a cloak of humor, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers who are too unintelligent or too indifferent to read.     – Joe Hill

When asked where he was born, Joe Hill would reply, “the planet Earth”.  Specifically, he was born in Sweden and was named Joel Emmanuel Haggland.  He became a labor activist, specifically a Wobbly, which was a term of unknown origin adopted by the Industrial Workers of the World, or the IWW.  Specifically, his specialty was radical songwriting.  His trick was to write new lyrics to familiar tunes, such as “Red River”, Glory Hallelujah” or any Stephen Foster song, so all a singer had to do was memorize the lyrics, read them from a little red book, or fake it.

By 1914, Joe found himself in Utah, helping to organize copper miners.  He was arrested one evening for allegedly robbing and murdering a store clerk and was convicted on very thin evidence.  His only link to any foul play was a bullet hole in his right hand that was supposedly furnished by a clumsy brother-in-law, but Joe Hill refused to defend himself, choosing instead to become a martyr.  The governor offered him a choice of the noose or the gun, and Joe chose the latter.

As Joan Baez sang on the night she performed at Woodstock, “It takes more than guns to kill a man – I never died, said he.”  Well, he did and he didn’t.

Title: Ready, Mr. Muzak?: portrait of Maj. Gen. George Owen Squier
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 48×36
Year: 2020

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black notes and the white notes together.     – Richard Nixon

Long, long ago in a universe far, far away, before the folk music scare of the early 1960s was even a twinkle in Bob Dylan’s eye, and even before the birth of rock-and-roll, background music was invented.  Easy Listening.  Elevator music.  Telephone on-hold music.  And we have General George Owen Squier to thank for it.  Thanks a lot, George.

General Squier invented telephone multiplexing in 1910 and acquired patents in 1922 for methods of distributing signals over existing electrical lines.  He saw the potential for this trick to deliver music to subscribers, without the need for a radio.  Radio caught up to him in the 1930s, so he concentrated his efforts on delivering music to commercial customers.  (All this happened in Cleveland — yes, I know.)  In 1934 Squier named his company Muzak, because his product was music and he liked the Kodak name.  No other reason.  By then he’d learned manipulative tricks to ease worker-listener stress and to encourage productivity, as well to motivate shoppers.  He next began to record his own music, which was muzak.  The man had it down.

He was accused of brainwashing the public in the 1950s, but who wasn’t?  In the 60s and 70s demand for muzak became so huge that it found its way back into our most personal and holy sanctum, the private home.

Major General George Owen Squier was buried when he died (not before, though some were tempted) at Arlington National Cemetery, which makes him John F. Kennedy’s equal.  But not JFK’s confederate – Robert E. Lee was the confederate, and the man who generously donated his vast front yard to become our nation’s most prestigious boneyard.

 

Title: Public Emeny #1
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 30×30
Year: 2015-20

Justice is incidental to law and order.     – J. Edgar Hoover

In this re-animation of a police photo of the recently-martyred holey-man  John Dillinger, I experimented with water-based oil paint, then later over-painted it with the good stuff.

The green arch in the painting plays multiple roles, suggesting an engraved image on US currency, or every bank teller’s nightmare of Dillinger waiting at their window to make a withdrawal.  The hair is just him being cool.

Dillinger was only 31 when he was gunned down in front of the Biograph Theater in Chicago, where he and a hot date had gone to see Bonnie and Clyde.   Just a few months earlier he’d famously escaped from jail in Princeton, Illinois, where he was being held for doing a lot of bad things.  He accomplished this by using a fake gun that he’d carved out of a tomato.

Title: Queen of the Roller Derby: portrait of RGB
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 70×44
Year: 2020   SOLD

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to follow you.     – Ruth Bader Ginsberg

I don’t know what I can tell you about this painting that I don’t already know.  I am (and you may also be) a fan of the fiery woman who became the second female U.S. Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who argued against gender discrimination in 6 landmark cases while winning recognition as being an engine of liberal dissent.  She voices her principles and won’t back down, stand down or step down, and we are all the beneficiaries.

Her roll as a Roller Derby Queen in this painting reflects her competitiveness, and the Star Spangled Banner behind her, as well as the United Skates on America on her feet, symbolize the country she loves.  The 54 on her uniform might refer to her year of graduation from Cornell, but it also carries the suggestion of a 5-4 Supreme Court decision.  The “speed lines” behind her (to the right) are an ancient comic strip gimmick used to suggest movement of an otherwise stationary object or person.  Think of Sluggo chasing an ice cream truck.  These lines I turn into “equality” symbols, like those the ACLU uses, here paired into colors of diversity.  (Btw, RBG co-founded the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project in 1972.)

RBG’s pose and detailing were inspired by a photo of Joannie Weston, aka the “Blonde Bomber”, a real Queen of the Roller Derby who rolled for the San Francisco Bay Bombers.  She also once hit 8 home runs in a college softball game.

The first thing that happened when I posted this painting on the fridge was dozens of roller derblers came out of the woodwork, all aclamour with purchase inquiries.  And I’d better accommodate them, because there probably isn’t a one of them who couldn’t beat me to within an inch of my wife.

Title: Yep, Comanch’: portrait of John Ford
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 42×42
Year: 2019

It is easier to get an actor to be a cowboy than to get a cowboy to be an actor.     – John Ford

This painting started out as a triple portrait of John Ford, Henry Ford and John Henry, three folk celebrities linked forever by name into a strange hedron representing working men of varying ethnicities and religiosities.  But the project unraveled as the three subjects drifted apart, each into his own separate painting, with Henry Ford in one, Hammerin’ Henry Aaron filling in for Hammerin’ John Henry in another, and filmmaker John Ford as the subject of this painting.

John Ford’s pictures differ from my pictures in that his moved.  They were moving pictures.  Mine might juke around a little bit but they rarely go very far.   Most of the time they don’t even leave the room.   In recent paintings I’d been permitting the backgrounds to assume a more dominant role in the composition, and this one pushes the subject almost entirely out the frame.  I have combined in this background Ford’s trademark “big sky” style panorama with a Hanna-Barbera “Queeksdraw” desert and the loathsome shitstorm thunderheads so eloquently captured in much contemporary Western art.  Upstaging Ford is the great Comanche chief, Quanah Parker, whose heart marks this painting’s center.  Ford’s movies frequently pitted Comanches vs. cowboys or cavalry in Monument Valley, which is actually Navaho land.  In fact, John Ford’s “Comanche” extras generally spoke Navaho, not Comanche.  But what do we know?

Ford said it is easier to get an actor to play a cowboy than to get a cowboy to be an actor.  No John Ford painting would be complete without a mention of his go-to fake cowboy, John Wayne, so here Ford wears Wayne’s shirt, in living Technicolor, from The Searchers (1956), a picture in which his character (Ethan Edwards) is slighted by Indians and mahem ensues.  And you thought Denzel Washington acted crazy in Training Day.

Yippee yi yo ki yay!

 

 

Title: There’s a Red Horse Over Yonder
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 34×24 (8×6 hands)
Year: 2017

The horse is too small, the jockey too big, the trainer too old, and I’m too dumb to know the difference.     – Charles Howard (Seabiscuit’s owner)

In his first 100 races the racehorse Seabiscuit never once finished in the money, and he was headed for the proverbial (or actual) glue factory in a (metaphorical) handbasket until he came under proper management and training.  Stubborn, little, gnarly and eccentric, he was ultimately a most unlikely racehorse to be setting track records.

He always insisted on bedding down at night with his pets: a goat, a dog and a duck.  I started doing likewise and my life has improved immeasurably, as long as Ducky remembers his C-pap machine.

In this painting, I bend earth and sky in the background into a horseshoe halo to show the strange, inside-out world that domesticated animals live in.  It turns all checker-boardy, to suggest racing silks and other garish racetrack graphics.

By dressing an animal something like a Mexican wrestler with a branded hood, I make a crack about Seabiscuit’s early career racing in Tijuana, but it also speaks of animal domestication.  We own them.  That was his actual uniform.  Racehorses are always (literally) running for their lives.

Seabiscuit’s cocky gaze I caught in a horse’s eyes in the paddock of Hong Kong’s Happy Valley racetrack.  The horse told me he wanted to run and was going to win, and he did.   Afterward, he and I went to Wanchai to trade shots and watch the fillies walking by.  Hay, we’re only human!

Title: Sherpa, Portrait of Tenzing Norgay
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 48×36
Year: 2019

I have never regarded myself as a hero, but Tenzing undoubtedly was. — Sir Edmund Hillary

Once upon a time, climbing mountains in the Himalayas was a challenge, so climbers would hire local Sherpas to help.  These Sherpas were experienced climbers themselves, with low pulse rates and noives of steel.  Every Nepalese boy wanted to be a Sherpa for the prestige, the money and the surplus equipment.  A Sherpa jocking around with his ropes, goggles and thick climbing boots was the envy of everyone.  It was a ticket out of the dull, unpromising life they faced as small-time herders.

There is no evidence, photographic or otherwise, that Sir Edmund Hillary, reputedly the first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest (in 1953), ever did so.  But there are pictures he took of his Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, standing on the summit, waving and planting a flag.  Just sayin’.

Neither man knew they’d be the ones selected to make the final assault, since an expedition would send up the climber and Sherpa most likely to finish the job.  The best horses on the track.  So, it could have been anyone other than Hillary and Tenzing, who were in the right place in the right shape at the right time.  Tenzing would have been okay with it either way, I aver, because he had already been to the summit of Mount Everest many times.  That’s my theory, which is as thin as air at 26 thousand feet.

I celebrate Tenzing Norgay in this painting, the Tiger of the Himalayas, sitting higher than McGuinn and McGuire, atop the highest mountain on earth.

 

 

Title: Tutti-Fruitti Prosecutti: Sacco and Vanzetti
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 42×42
Year: 2018

There is the best man I ever cast my eyes upon since I lived, a man that will last and will grow always more near to and more dear to the heart of the people, so long as admiration for goodness, for virtues, and for sacrifice will last.  I mean Eugene V. Debs.   – Bartolomeo Vanzetti

Unpopular ethnic group + Unpopular politics = The usual suspects.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are as inseparable in our minds as Bonnie & Clyde, Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, Caspar and Pollux, The Smothers Brothers, Republicans and sexism, or Chang and Eng (who were Barnum’s co-joined twins — sick, I know).  In this painting I correct the order in which our heroes are usually photographically shown, by placing Sacco on the left and Vanzetti on the right.   The gagootz and the hot-head.  They showed up every day in the courtroom for years (their trial dragged on for seven), dressing like governors and courteously removing their hats for judges, ladies, photographers and executioners.

Neapolitan ice cream in the background plays the part of the Italian flag, but with a twist, though neither man was Neapolitan or could afford ice cream.

I feel I captured Sacco & Vanzetti as well as an artist can, but the Bridgewater, Massachusetts Police captured them first.  Coincidentally, both men died on the same day, on August 23, 1927.  They were both innocent, but Vanzetti deserved the noose for his outrageous moustache alone.  Don’t be too impressed, his sister’s was even bigger.

Title: Beggars Can’t Be Chaucers
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 72×48
Year: 2016-2019

“By God,” quod he, “for pleynly, at a word, Thy drasty ryming is nat worth a toord!”     — Geoffrey Chaucer

Goeffrey Chaucer writen Canterbury Tales and some other things, including a body of poetry big enough to fil a Penguin anthology.  Yes, that big, and he writen all those shorter poems during a single two-week bender.

With style and mood nicked from illuminated manuscripts and cathedrals themselves, a pilgrimage unto Canterbury is here shown with Goeffrey himself in his own tale, confronting pitous beggars.  But Chaucer was nat so class-conscious.  Although he was a good accountant, his career checking wool exports for tax purposes was nat as lucrative as his boss Richard the Gaunt hoped it would be for the two of them, due to Chaucer’s integrity.  This also caused a lyfelong rift between him and his wyf, who really got off on being a Lady in the Queen’s court and lived highly in digs north of London, while her housbonde shivered in government housing inside a city gate with stoon wals 13 feet thick and arrow slits for windwes.  But it was the perfect place for a government accountant to brood between manic outbursts of writing.

In the top half of this peynting, soaring vaults describe the vertical, bigger-than-man sense one experiences in an ancient cathedral.  All that, just to keep reyn off the backs of people who are preyest.  As for the color, I tried to peynt the cathedral’s echo, and Canterbury Cathedral does look like it’s built out of tons and tons of sepia.  I tried yellow ochre at first, but I’m not fond of yellow ochre.  In fact, even yellow ochre’s mom hates yellow ochre.

The rendering of figures in old manuscripts always looks so amateurish and cartoony to our eyes, that even the horses resemble toys, so I took the next logical step and turned Geoff’s hors into the toy My Pretty Pony, which adds levity to all this medieval ponderance.  Levity and branding.  I rely on the hors to put the canter into Canterbury.