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.
This painting once went missing with ten others when the owner of the gallery where they were showing had to flee creditors. I’d rented a truck to remove and ship home my paintings, but I found the gallery padlocked and bare. After receiving an anonymous phone tip later that same day, I located the paintings in the basement of a local restaurant, with one painting broken in half and this one punctured clear through. I ultimately repaired and sold both. 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.
We all have our sad vanities to pursue. Or avoid.