No Evils, oil and wax on paper, 22x30"

Another of the moth series.

Dream Roses, oil and wax on prepared paper
location unkown

Another of the dream series...people often ask me where the rose images come from...so, here's the story: I was in my early twenties and stopped by a friend's party one evening. While there I received some unwanted attention from a man who just happened to be in a wheelchair. The problem wasn't the wheelchair, it was the fact that I just wasn't interested---I was pining for someone else, and, party guy was a sloppy drunk. But, his disability made me treat him differently...rather than brush him off like I wound any other sloppy drunk, I was too nice. I was patient when he tried to trap me in corners; I was patient when he tried to chase me to my car in his wheelchair (kind of humorous now--but frustrating then). No, he never caught me, but I was relentlessly chased. Finally, I escaped. The next day at work, two dozen roses arrived, along with a clear expectation that we were dating. So, what I was reluctant to do the evening before, I was forced to do---sever any expectation on his part. But I was disturbed by my initial reaction...why hadn't I done this (and been ruthless) the evening before? You can do it, and not be heartless. Anyway, I took the roses to my studio and pinned them to the wall--to remind me to be straightforward, etc. As the roses withered, they seemed to draw toward each other and form their own relationships. I began to draw them and consider them personalities. Eventually, they came to represent people in my drawings, and become comments on my own relationships. Dream Roses is one of the first of these images.

Remembrance of Things Past.......

Dead Flower, oil stick on paper, c. 1990.


While I will admit Proust was tough to plow through in college, and frankly, I didn't make it all the way through at the time, it has managed to stick with me all these years.....

I have been very busy with that teaching thing....

I was flipping through some old sketchbooks the other day and found this funky little sketch....I remember thinking when I'd done it that I'd drawn something from my past.....no, I'm not one to really go for reincarnation or anything like that, but if I remember correctly, I had recently read Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, which is a fabulous little book about remembering and discovering....

And, I was looking through old slides and found this work, which is oil stick on tar paper, done about 20 years ago! It's in the collection of my friend Barry Motes....I think I will post a few older things here and there...looking at them makes my fingers itch to work.....I love the texture and color of this one---I remember the tar paper was lots of fun to work with, and I understand the peice has held up over the past 20 years, which sort of surprises me, I guess.

Trio of Peppers, oil on canvas, 8x10"

Hmmmm....I like the green pepper and the bottle of
liquin in the back. But the yellow pepper...not so much.

Cannas from my Garden, oil on canvas, 8x10"

I had forgotten how much fun it is to paint glass....

Beautiful Tomato, oil on panel, 5x7"

Beautiful because it's the first one of the season....