Figurative Paintings 1996

“Jo With Pumpkin: 1st Version”
Oil/panel
32” x 48
1996

Jo was the girlfriend of a good friend of mine in the mid 1990’s. She modeled for me for a very short time but she inspired many paintings. I usually photographed her with black and white film because I was interested in her forms more than her as a person.

About 10 years after I painted this it was stolen by my art dealer Roland Crane. If anyone has any information about this painting I would be willing to provide a financial reward for its recovery.

I recently did a second version of this piece both because the photos continue to be inspiring to me, but also as a way to somehow overcome the feelings of having been ripped off by my former dealer.

This piece, like a lot of work at the time it was painted, is essentially a black and white painting. It has the gritty raw feeling that my studio had at that time.

At some point, if I ever recover this painting it would be fun to see them side by side.

“Steve”
Oil/Panel
4’ x 6’
1996

It’s hard to believe, in retrospect, that this was a commissioned piece. This is a bold piece by any measure and I’m surprised I had the courage to do it. I was in my late 30’s. I would like to think I have at least that much courage now 25 years later, but I’m not sure that is true.

Steve was a successful business man and had a reputation within the gay community that was in part based on his panache, brazen non gay way of speaking and his big house parties. If you didn’t know better, or look around at his friends you would think he was a mid-level donor to the RNC with his own little Superpac.

Perhaps that’s why he liked this piece so much. It pushed people’s expectations of who he was to new limits. And one thing I remember about Steve was that he liked pushing people’s buttons.

I was very grateful to him for the opportunity to be paid to do my boldest work. I don’t know what happened to Steve or if he is even still alive, but I learned a lot from him, more than I realized at the time. I hope this painting is still providing him with some joy or at least amusement as he watches new guests encounter it for the first time.

“Homage to Joel Peter Whitkin”
Oil/panel
48” x 36”
1996

This piece is an homage to a famous contemporary photographer who shares my fascination with tradition and the bizarre. In this piece I placed one of my own models in the setting of a Whitkin-esque photograph including elements that he would include such as a fetus and a skeleton. The painting is also almost completely black and white like Whitkin’s photography.
The figure is Mari, a woman who modeled for me several times in 1995 and 1996. She was not a hermaphrodite. I simply grafted her upper body onto the lower torso and hips of a male figure.I don’t remember who modeled for the male part.The skull and fetus were taken from Whitkin’s own photographs.
I was interested in exploring various kinds of “beauty” at that time.One kind of beauty was the beauty in ugliness. I wanted to see if one could make a beautiful painting with such twisted and macabre images and a plain palette. I was curious about the nature of “beauty in truth.” Did the allegory of birth and death and the intertwined nature of male and female form a beautiful thought and could that outweigh the other more conventionally unpleasant aspects of the work?
It’s hard to know.Some of the people who have seen it love it.Others hate it.But no onehas ever been able to tell me why they love it.The haters have been much more articulate and forthcoming.

“Orgasm”
Oil/panel
70” x 48
1996

Around this time I created a body of work that featured me covered in mud. These were not self portraits. I just happened to be the only person I knew willing to be covered in mud and photographed. Eventually I came to refer to this body of work as “Erden Mensch” which is German f or”mud man” but which more meaningly refers to a man who is deep, soulful and full of integrity.

I some respects this could be considered an Erden Mensch painting. It looks like one. But it was inspired by something different than most of my Erden Mensch pieces. It was inspired by a tiny thumbnail advertisement for a video of the sort that appears in pornographic magazines.

I was interested in seeing what happened pictorially when one paints from a very tiny photograph. I was also interested in the subject. Perhaps because of the minuscule size and hence difficulty of seeing the image clearly, I had to make up some of this painting. I believe the obscurity of the image both provoked and freed my imagination.

Whatever the aesthetic or cerebral intentions, the painting is visceral and intense. It is also unique in that much erotic art does not focus on the moment of orgasm itself.

“The Three Graces”
Oil/panel
48” x 48”
1996

This painting was a study for what was going to be a large painting of these three fabulous women. They had recently bought a bar and turned it into a place for artists to show their work and called it “The Art Bar.” I met them through one of my models and immediately fell in love with them and their walls.

It was 1996 and I was young and eager to hang my art anywhere anyone would let me. I had recently inherited my Grandmother’s old gigantic Buick Electra and would strap paintings to the roof or stuff them through the open windows to haul off to the next show. There was hardly a day when I did’t have at least one painting in the car on its way somewhere or the other.
Shortly after these three women actually officially became owners of their bar I organized a photo shoot at my studio for the painting. They brought champagne. Everyone was in a fabulous mood and I got great shots.
A few days later I produced this painting to show them what I had in mind. I started this painting in the afternoon and painted straight through until about 11 that night. Threw it in the car wet and drove down to the bar.They loved it and there was more champagne.
However, by the time I saved up enough money to buy the 8’ canvas I had in mind they had a big fight, split up and sold the bar. Before long it was just another place to drink cheap beer and play pool. Nothing wrong with that.But the grander vision of a place for artists to hang out and shoot the shit about art was dead.
I have always taken pleasure and even a little pride in the speed that I paint because it allows me to express a higher percentage of the pipeline of stuff that flows through my head. But it also reveals the confidence and facility I have with my tools and vision. But I have never painted anything so fast and with such facility as this piece. It’s not necessarily my very favorite piece but it is certainly in my top 10.
I am particularly proud of the smiles. You may have noticed there are not many paintings of people smiling. There is a reason for that.They are very difficult to paint. One slight variation of tone or misplaced highlight and it looks “off” or more like a scream. Just like a smile itself, it has to be fresh and spontaneous or it looks forced or fake. But here….a triple smile! Really?Who does that? Forgive me but I do have to boast a little.

One reason this piece came out so fast and so “right” is that I had been working on a large scale collaborative project with two friends of mine who were also skilled painters.Jodi and Nick and I decided to do a full scale copy of a Franz Hals painting of the sort you see on old cigar boxes. It was very challenging work and demanded we look very closely at this Dutch Master of loose yet clear brush work.During that exercise I learned how to use a 1” square sable brush. That is a surprisingly large brush for detail work but with careful scrutiny of the Hals painting I was sure it was how he created his affects. Incidentally the scale of the figures in this painting and the Hals were the same size.This large brush allowed me to create a lot of painting in a relatively short time. But it demanded absolute accuracy and surety of placement, loading of the brush and an application of wet paint into wet paint to achieve the buttery soft transitions that give painting its smooth “real” quality.
This was just one of those moments where everything was right. The kind of moment you hope for as an artist and prepare for but never really know when it will come.The rest of the time I just labor on with as much integrity and spirit as I can muster.But I have learned to accept that these magic moments only come when they do…I can not force them but I better damn well be ready with my brush in hand and my work shop juiced up and functioning when they do.Like a surfer, I don’t create the wave, but I better be in the water and have my skills and board hewn so I can catch that wave when it comes. And so I labor in the service and the promise of the “gift”… that breath of spirit that simply comes when it does.

“Self Portrait”
Oil/panel
30 x 24”
1996

I painted this when I was 35. And even though I am the model for many paintings in the years preceding this, none of them are self portraits. I just happen to be the model but they are not paintings about me.

This is.

I sold this piece shortly after I painted it so I have not seen it in a long time. What strikes me about it now is the full frontal almost confrontational look of it. The directness is softened a bit by the affected theatricality of the velvet jester’s hat and slightly pouty mouth. But otherwise this guy is serious about his painting and he wants you to know it.

This was painted in front of a mirror. So I suppose this is how I look when am looking at a model and painting. And yes, I often wear a hat when I’m painting.

“Jamie Seated”
Oil/Panel
4’ x 4’
1996

This is a case of squeezing out one more and having it turn out really well. And in my experience that last squeezed out one is often the best. In this case I had been painting constantly. I was exhausted and on the verge of burnout. The model, Jamie, wasn’t even someone I knew or worked with. She was the friend of Jo who I had been working with intensely. She just offered, as a throw away comment one day while arriving to pick up Jo that she would like to model sometime. So I snapped a few photos and did 2 paintings of her before collapsing and taking a much needed break.

And yet the circle held me in as well. I never felt like leaping out of the studio to go around smashing windows and pillaging the neighborhood even though the urges that came out had that kind of destructive element to them. There was something about having set space that made it both safe for this “creature” to come forth but also to contain it.
The result inspired a year and half of intense painting that even now 24 years later stands as my most productive period. The struggle to know what my figures should be doing in my paintings was over. While it’s not clear what they are doing, the poses came straight out of these rituals and made themselves quite known. Looking back on these works it’s still hard to say what they are doing. In this painting is the figure, which happens to be me, posing for a painting or pretending to be a gargoyle or posing for a Halloween poster? It’s could be any of these things. And yet it could be any of those. Instead, it’s my hope that it looks like an enactment of some kind of primal ritual closer to what we see in photos of tribal people dancing to invoke a protective spirit or posing to frighten off an evil spirit.
I’m not a tribal person of course. But even though I am a modern person who would be lost without my refrigerator and online banking, I am a human being with DNA that links me profoundly to thousands of generations of ancestors who probably did this very kind of thing to celebrate, invocate and simply entertain each other while night after night creatures both real and imagined crept closer to the fire light and lurked beneath their eyelids in sleep.

“Crouching Mud Man”
Oil/panel
4’ x 4’
1996
Once I had my big break through and started painting the figure in 1993 or so, I eventually discovered that covering my body in mud made me look more like a sculpture than a person. The unified subdued color and tone of the mud obfuscated and outright covered over the particulars of coloration and body hair patterns that make up the visual cues that allow us to identify a particular body in front of us as a particular person. This had the advantage of making the model essentially more like a work of art before I even began painting him/her.
For most of the time the model was me mostly because I couldn’t find anyone else willing to get covered in mud. Photographing myself while covered in mud proved to be difficult but eventually I found someone to help.
But there is more to this mud thing than simply making the figure more sculptural. The application of mud, the act itself, gradually evolved into a kind of ritual act, or more accurately an invocation. The application of the mud had this uncanny ability to put me in a somewhat altered state allowing something primal and instinctual to emerge. What at first was just the sloppy business of getting covered in mud for a photo shoot soon evolved into a powerful ritual of deep exculpation of primal urges and actions.
The setting itself became almost like an altar or sacred circle where it felt safe and appropriate to let these things come out. And strangely the setting of that space was as important as the application of the mud. It allowed me to let go like the way one does on the dance floor if the music and the setting is just right.

“Mud Man with Sunflower”
Oil/panel
8’ x4’
1996

This is a story of the power of patronage and what happens when it isn’t enough. But first, a little background about the painting. It was painted in 1996, arguably one of the most prolific and important years of my career so far. I am writing this in 2023. The painting is part of a mini series I call “Erden mensch” or more simply “mud man.” I have written about this series extensively under other paintings so I will just mention briefly here that this series features paintings of myself naked but covered in a kind of full body mask with certain tribal like body paint markings. These pieces express my discovery and ownership of my authentic masculinity and spiritual self and are, in my mind, my first really powerful figurative work.

They were also done during a period of serious financial insecurity. I was and had been broke and living in my studio which was a storage warehouse under an 8 lane freeway. I was in my mid 30’s doing what perhaps I should have been doing in my mid 20’s. Nevertheless, here I am, liberated from my self-effacing timid self. Standing up to bat on my own home plate…a chunk of concrete that could represent a pedestal, a foundation, a chunk of territory or even a small but significant sacred space. All the while taking my sunflower firmly in hand like a weapon or bat preparing to take a swing at life itself.

Unlike Michelangelo’s David, I am not relaxed yet tense. Instead, I am solid yet unsure. I’m holding the sunflower as though I am only just now aware of its power and not even really sure what kind of power it is. And that, is exactly how I felt at 35. I had come into my strength as an artist and yet only just so. I still didn’t know what kind of power it held or quite what to do with it. Should I bludgeon someone with it or bless them. is it a spiritual symbol or an actual act of seeding the fields? Or both. Is it me simply “being a model” for something cool or me being a model because this act of covering myself in mud was actually a powerful part of my becoming a man? Or both?

Only a few years later, when I was still struggling to make even a meager living on my art I met Ken and Bruce who after seeing this piece only once bought it. I asked $2,000 and they accepted my price. It was 1996 and that felt like $20,000 to me. The money was a source of great relief but it also meant that this rugged almost sketch like approach with unabashedly figural work was something someone was willing to pay for.

Ken and Bruce went on to buy 4 more pieces over the coming years and played an important role in helping me meet people who also purchased works. That is quite a story unto itself and I have written about that under other paintings. During that time I was able to visit them in their home in LA and co create theatrical performances and art rituals in their home. These were halcyon days with lots of fun and learning and personal growth. I even got married and had a kid. Things were looking up in every way…even financially.

And then it just dried up. Or rather, my ability to keep moving my art at those prices dried up. Yes, I continued to sell art. I even rented a little extra warehouse space and turned it into a show room. I organized my growing oeuvre so that I could access work for clients who were coming over to “look for a painting.” I was good at it. I even enjoyed it….for awhile. But within a few years it became clear that it wasn’t going anywhere. After a few more years I had not yet attracted a professional dealer and so aside from a few gallery contracts in what were mostly boutique galleries selling my own miniature repeats of works such as this, I was left to flog my own work in my own showroom to whoever I could at whatever price I could get, without undermining myself. And so, my prices didn’t grow and I began to feel woefully undervalued.

By 2005 I realized I needed another way to make money or I would be seriously broke and by then I had 2 kids and was divorced. I now had to make time for my children and provide child support. And so I created a theater with a bistro and coffee shop. It was an enormous amount of work since I had zero working capitol. By 2010 it failed financially leaving me with $340,000 in debt.

But, it had a brand. And I had a following. I also had created a little spa within the Bistro-theater-gallery-studio-showroom. By 2012 I was digging my way out of debt. I worked even harder than the bistro days. I sold commissions, I painted houses, I sold my paintings at discounted prices, I pinched and saved and negotiated and bargained. And more importantly from 2013-2016 I did nothing but grow the spa. By some miracle of good luck, 15 years of brand identity and grueling hard work I had paid off the debt. But during that time I did no art and sold no art.

In 2017 I had a studio again and some money. I started painting. By 2018 I had enough to lease more space and made my studio bigger. Meanwhile the spa grew bigger too and I was also delegating tasks. By the time Covid hit in 2020 I was positioned well enough financially to protect myself, my business and my core employees. And I was painting and sculpting at full capacity again.

By 2020 I finally had a patron that provided me with the financial support I needed to make the very best art I could without needing to be a broke bohemian living in a windowless warehouse under the freeway. My patron was my own spa. I was approaching my 60th birthday.

Now, the Covid pandemic is over. The spa is still growing in size and complexity. And I now have a leadership team freeing up even more time. And while I have an even bigger studio and the means to start doing large sculpture, what is even more powerful is that my spa is about creating the kinds of experiences I seek in museums and sacred spaces. My art plays an undeniably important role in providing that kind of experience for my guests. Not all of my output is appropriate for a spa. But there is still plenty that is. And I like challenging my guests too.

Without the support of Ken and Bruce and a few other key people way back in the mid and late 1990’s I simply could not have done this.

“Mud Man Clutching His Own Wrist”
Oil/panel
8’ x 4’
1996

I have already written extensively about why and how I evolved this process of covering myself in mud and then photographing myself for paintings. You can read more about that in any of several other paintings on this website.
I will add here that the large rock appears here in this work and in many others as a kind of pedestal for the model. For me, it served several functions.On a basic level it served the same function as a pedestal does for a sculpture. It is a kind of frame in that it sets it apart from everyday life. A pedestal says this little space is special and the thing that is on it is special. It is almost like an altar in that sense. This is not just a visually special place, it is spiritually special. We frame things that are special to us and hang them on the wall. If they aren’t that special we might still hang it on the wall but we don’t take the trouble to frame it.Likewise, we set something on a pedestal if it’s special to us. If it wasn’t, we would just throw it on the floor.
People who sell over priced shoes and handbags understand this very well. If they want the passerby to instantly understand that a pair of athletic shoes are really really special they put them on a very nice pedestal with their own special mini spot light.In a sense they have framed those shoes in a sacred space cut away from everyday life which implies that they should cost considerably more than a regular pair of shoes lined up with others on the slot wall.

Well, the same is true here. The figure is standing on his own little pedestal signifying that he is somehow something special. The mud and his pose on the stone suggest that this isn’t just some guy waiting at the bus stop for the #206 to take him downtown. No, this is something special. This is a guy who has done the unusual thing of covering himself in mud and assumed a pose on a rock that looks more than a little like a pedestal. The rock is, after all, removed from its natural setting and placed in a studio setting.

In fact the whole thing looks a bit more like the strange paintings by Edward Manet than I had previously thought. Consider the well known painting of the “Fifer” or “Dead Toreador.” The arrangement of these figures in what was clearly a studio set up without any pretext of their natural surroundings was as revolutionary at that time as his loose open brush work. My piece too, is done with very loose work and more attention to volume than surface detail. Interestingly, considering Manet’s contemporaries were still mostly painting realistic history paintings, his work would have also appeared revolutionary for how flat it looked, paving the way for another hundred years of successive generations of painters making their paintings deliberately ever more flat until the blank canvas itself was submitted as a work of Art.

Maybe this painting is both my homage to Manet and my way of giving him the finger, or at least all of those who came after him determined to declare that a painting was more valid the flatter it looked.
Now, another 20 years or so later no one cares about any of that. Or do they? Even though younger generations of artists after me who are not familiar with these issues in any learned way are still forced to contend with these basic facts of choosing how to create an image as well as the predispositions and prejudices that shape how we see and which linger on in the culture for better or worse. It is my hope that these paintings, created with these concerns, and these essays that are very much about these concerns will add something of understanding without burdening them with my own baggage. I suppose that is the concern with any educator or parent, where does teaching cease to be about education and begin to be about prejudicing. While I have attempted all of this with care and some of that in mind I am also certain that young minds are not as fragile as all that. They can, as I have, absorb information, sort out what is useful, deepen their understanding of their roots and move on to create something fresh and original no matter how much baggage we throw at them. I remain hopeful that education is a worthwhile endeavor and the young are not as fragile as some people think.

“Before the Drop”
Oil/panel
6’ x 4’
1996

This is me. Covered in mud.
I have written extensively for other paintings about how and why I covered myself in ritual settings. But there was something else at play as well. I wanted to make of myself something that was already art. Then, even if I was painting it realistically it would already be less mimetic and more artistic.

But really, what stands out for me is the earnestness of it. Keep in mind I was at the time of painting this in my mid 30’s and living in the peek of the art world being in thrall with detached irony. Instead I was deliberately trying to imbue my work with integrity, a connection to artist and spiritual traditions.

The work was unabashedly “serious” in serious ways. I was hoping that by painting it with genuine high spirits it would not be lugubrious. And maybe even a touch beautiful….nearly a dirty word in the 90’s. I wanted the piece to be so beautiful to look at you would linger long enough to have a developed thought and experience a moment of probity evolve from stillness and contemplation, the birthplaces of integrity.

The stone in the painting is actually a chunk of concrete I found outside the studio. It is a piece of ruble from a previous building. And here it blends with the figure by virtue of how it is painted. I’m lifting it and holding it. But how? And why? It is a shield? A burden? A piece of my own past? My proverbial baggage? It also looks to me like a turtle shell and all that implies, safety and a place to hide. The black backdrop appears majestic like death and another layer of protection. The sliver of blue seems like daylight and hope to me.

Who is this lonely man standing there squat with his burden and seemingly aware that he is on display, posing for the viewer …clearly not caught in the act.

About six months before I painted this I got Hepatitis A and turned yellow. I was very sick for over a month and felt like I was going to die. When I returned to my studio my work and my persona had changed.

The jaundice fever burned off my old skin.
Something heavy dropped.

“Richard’s Shoulder”
Oil/panel
30” x 20”
1996

This was one of many fragments of bodies I did of Richard during this time. These were meant as finished works for sale and indeed they did sell. However, they were also ways for me to hone my skills and knowledge of the figure and figure painting. Up until this point I had actually not really done much figure painting. So I was still figuring out how to do it.
Richard was a great model in that he knew how to pose, he understood art and he enjoyed the process.Richard was also a professional dancer so he had a beautifully developed yet not overly developed body.Additionally he understood music and brought my attention to a number of contemporary composers who also influenced my painting most notably Arvo Pärt.

“Richard’s Legs”
Oil/Panel
40” x 30”
1996

I like this painting so much I did a second version of it immediately after completing the first version. The second version is also strong. It is much bigger, about 6’ x 4’.  Both paintings sold right away.

These pieces were probably influenced by all the sculpture I did in the late 1980’s.I had a sculpture studio for a few years and did lots of torsos and legs and other body fragments inspired by the figure itself, Ancient Greek sculptural ruins and the work of Rodin. This piece looks almost as though one of Rodin’s sculptures was the model.

I still think I will return to sculpture one day.

“Richard’s Chest”
Oil/panel
30” x 48”
1996

I stopped. It wasn’t just to show you how I paint. It was to further communicate the full frontal vulnerability. The model has taken off his clothes and presented his heart. I have taken off my virtuoso “finish” and left the piece raw. My original marks are there for you to see.

“Couple of Hips”
Oil/panel
48 x 32”
1996

This painting was inspired by a professional black and white photograph I found in a book. I believe it was Howard Schatz’s book of photographs of ballet dancers who posed nude for him. The painting sold quickly to someone in Vancouver BC. I am grateful I have this reproduction because I really like this painting.
I know the painting is from 1996. There is no red underpainting which came later. The flesh is “flesh tone“ which was a little odd at this time but it is painted à la prima with no layering or glazing. The emphasis is still clearly on the sculptural forms of the torsos. The togetherness of the figures as a couple is clearly secondary to the sheer power and beauty of their forms asserting themselves as ends in and of themselves.
In the background the red and black paint makes the transition from figure to background to just paint on canvas a vibrant visual experience. In the painting of the figures themselves, I used broad sweeping strokes which follow the broad curves of the forms and are left “open“ and not over licked or smoothed out.
I liked this combination of forms so much so that several years later I staged a photograph of myself and one of my lovers in the same way. Since then I have kept this photo in a pile of my sketches and photos I hope to paint one day. That alone was now 15 years ago. I wonder how the passing of so much time will affect how I paint it when I finally do get to it.

“Punishment For Homos”
Oil/panel
6’ x 4’
1996

This is one of several paintings I did around this time inspired by woodblock prints and engravings from previous centuries. This particular painting was inspired by a series of prints demonstrating the types of torture and mutilation meted out to those accused of being homosexual.

The original print was a simple black and white linocut. Here I reinterpreted the piece in visual terms much like my “Erden Mensch” pieces I have written about under other paintings here.In fact, the figure here is also drawn from a photo of myself turned upside down. Perhaps the people meeting out the punishment are left off the composition or so vaguely painted so as not to pin this piece safely in history. Without seeing the people wielding the saw it could ostensibly be anybody… even us.

“Woman with Head Restraint”
Oil/Cardboard
24” x 16” Approximate
1996
Even by 1996 I had created a lot of paintings.And even then I sometimes wondered why am I painting this? The question was sometimes an issue of why this and not that. And occasionally it was deeper. Why am I painting at all?I presume everybody asks that of themselves at some point. And maybe even it’s important to ask oneself that routinely in order to stay aware and awake to one’s true passion as opposed to painting because of someone else’s or something else’s undue influence.
Often I become involved in painting something because I stumble on to something that simply catches my attention.It probably catches my attention for unseen reasons with varying degrees of conscious or unconscious awareness of why.Well… for whatever reason when I stumbled onto a book of torture devices and images from Medieval Europe I was motivated to do oil paintings of the linear illustrations I found there.
This woman is wearing a metal cage around her head as a form of torture and as a way to make it impossible to engage in oral sex.
I also did several other paintings inspired from other illustrations I found in this book. I never completed the grand 9’ x 18’ canvas inspired by a tiny illustration featuring a large tree with over 30 people hung to death on its sprawling branches and crowds of people gathered around to presumably watch.
To this day I don’t understand what my motivations were to paint these. But I do know that in an art studio when inspiration comes you act first and ask questions later.That is not a good way to conduct almost anything else. But in the studio it is vital.

“I Covered a Lot Of Groupon Today”
Oil/panel
6 x 4’
1996

Around 1995 or so I discovered that I could melt images from mass produced magazines on to paper using a chemical called MEK. It is a powerful solvent used to clean printing presses and paint machinery. It will also melt your skin and your brain if it gets on you or you breath too much of it.

Of course I knew I could make copies on a xerox machine. But rubbing them onto another paper gave them more of an artistic look and allowed me to collage them in a way that would have been difficult on a copy machine. Once I figured all this out I went wild using all kinds of printed material, even pornography.

I was always struck by the strange juxtapositions of images and messages in magazines and newspapers, especially between the ads and the content. In this case there was an ad that ran frequently in many magazines for Marlboro cigarettes featuring an iconic masculine cowboy with the tag line, “I covered a lot of ground today.”

I also thought that pornographic images were particularly interesting with this technique because they simultaneously lost some of their ability to sexually titillate but at the same time gained an ability to comment on underlying attitudes and predispositions without simply becoming more pornography itself. That’s a tricky tightrope to walk but this MEK transfer technique seemed to offer a way forward.

Then, I decided to see if I could use these little 8.5 x 11” MEK collages as “studies” for larger paintings. This piece is the one and only time I tried this. And I remember thinking how good it felt and that I should do more.

However, that was 1996. I was on fire moving in so many directions at once and producing so much art. This breakthrough simply got lost in the storm of directions and possibilities that were taking shape in my studio at that time.

In a note simply to myself I want to add a technical point here in case this website becomes my primary took for looking back on my work for assessment and direction in the future. This piece was done with paint thinner while almost all the other paintings I did from that point on were done with oil. The difference may seem trivial but it is significant. Paint thinner is fast and harsh. Oil is luscious and slow. Paint thinner is graphic and edgy…literally…the edges of the strokes and the paint tend to be crisp with graphic punch. With oil the edges are soft and buttery. One can layer and even fast painting with oil is slow compared to paint thinner.

“Men Struggling” two versions
Both oil on panel
Both 6′ x 4′
1996 and 2003

These two paintings were inspired by the same photo I took of myself and my friend Delton on a rocky beach in Hawaii in 1995. I did the first painting in the fast “all at once” approach known as ala prima that was typical of my work in 1996. The second version was done in 2004 and is done more realistically and with many carefully applied layers of paint and glazes to give the figures a sensuous more lifelike look. That was typical of my work at that time.

I revisited the original photos to explore something different about what I saw there. It wasn’t that I felt the 1996 version was incomplete. Quite the contrary. I always felt that the piece was powerful and captured something of the essence of Hawaii’s intense earthy fire. The second version, although more realistic seems to have less raw power and more psychological complexity and of course sensual grace.

Clearly the interlocking figures was very appealing to me. But I was also thinking of using this figure group as part of a much larger piece which I did a year later.

It is also interesting to see how my work has changed over time and by using the same image one can compare the approaches more directly than one would if the comparison involved completely different ideas and compositions.

When I was coming of age as an artist in the early 80’s using photographs for one’s art was taboo. And the idea of using the same photograph twice was only slightly more reprehensible than the idea of one repeating oneself. Well, I’m glad I didn’t let those silly notions get in my way. They were born out of the well intentioned high philosophy of abstract expressionism. And for good reasons. But those ideas no longer made sense and in fact only stood in the way of my creative growth. So, with some difficulty in the 1980’s, I finally moved past those old ideas and did what I wanted.

“Juggling Skulls”
Oil on panel
6′ x 4′
1996

This piece was inspired by the men included here. These men were all members of a professional dance troupe called Spectrum Dance Company. Their presentations were a blend of jazz and modern. The company is still going strong in Seattle.

These men all became my friends and would often come model and rehearse in my painting studio. I would usually photograph them because being dancers they did not sit still.

Most of the time I did paintings of them as individuals. But I also did a few pieces with 2 or more. This is undeniably a bit of a pastiche. The figures don’t quite line up. They exist in different zones. And yet, that seems to add structure to the piece. The invisible fault lines add a counterpoint to the central and frontal stacking of the 2 figures in the foreground. And the boldness of the red seems to function like compositional glue or more like the way sheeting material does to a structure when applied to a wall. It keeps the painting from racking, or shifting in unsettling ways. It is the paintings anchor.

This piece has a weird twist in its pedigree. It was borrowed by a man who commissioned a painting from me but had not committed with a down payment. In my naive enthusiasm I loaned him the painting to help get him fully onboard with the commission. He loved the piece and was very happy to have it on loan. What I didn’t know is that the home he was living in was not his. It was his girlfriend’s home. Much as I love art, I think Its probably important that one have a home before buying art.

At some point he and his partner broke it off and he disappeared. I only met his partner once and didn’t have her contact information. After several years and the advent of Facebook I finally found her. When I asked if she still had the painting and could I come recover it she said, “sure, it’s just been in the garage for years. Please come get it. I need the space.” Music with a tinge of ouch to any artists ears.

“Jamie Reclining”
Oil on panel
4′ x 6′
1996

One of the draw backs of being prolific is that it’s hard to keep track of everything. I don’t remember what happened to this piece. Did I sell it? Gift it? Or was it stolen?

It’s so striking and weird. And very much apart of the aesthetic that came together so powerfully for me in late 1995 and lasted until about halfway through 1997.

“Richard Standing”
Oil on panel
8’ x 4’
1996

Richard has been modeling for me longer than anyone in my career. During these first years of working together in 1995 and 1996 we did many photo shoots and live modeling sessions. Richard was a professional dancer and choreographer. So he understood line and composition. He also understood artistic form as a concept. And, as a dancer, he kept his body in absolute perfect form in a balanced way.

Richard was also an intellectual influence on me. He introduced me to lots of new music most notably Arvo Part, a contemporary Estonian composer of so called “serious” music. Part’s music would have a profound influence on my artistic direction over the next few years. And Richard introduced me to many of Seattle’s notable dancers and choreographers.

In this painting I was already influenced by Part’s music. The black backdrop and clear lines that somehow convey both sensuality and sacredness are hallmarks of Part’s music.

But I was also bringing in all the feeling I had for the sculpture of Rodin that I had studied so intensely in the late 1980’s. I wanted size. I wanted speed. I wanted volume and motion contained in the posed figure. A cut male figure who understood line was the perfect match for my artistic ambitions in that moment and this piece among all my pieces of Richard sums that up best.

“Hope”
Oil/panel
6’ x 4’
1996

This painting was nearly complete. A friend stopped by and after admiring the new work as well as debating what wasn’t quite working, we went out for a drink. When I came back to the studio it had somehow come off the wall and painting bench it was propped on.

We were horrified to find the painting had done a face plant on the floor. When we peeled the painting off the floor it was smeared and covered in dirt. As bad as it seemed at first, it didn’t take long to repair and in fact allowed me to resolve the composition. The upper right corner of the painting has a square space formed by the figures and the edges of the painting which I had over emphasized by painting a large yellow square there. In my effort to clean the yellow I realized that the problem with the composition was that the yellow was not just creating a counter point to the drama of the figure as was my intention, but was actually creating a visual trap from which the eye had a hard time escaping.
Once the yellow was gone, everything fell into place.

“Grief and Loss”
Oil/panel
6’ x 4’
1996

There was so much death and grief in my circle of friends in those days. AIDS was well understood by that time but a cure and preventative vaccines were still a long way away and it was too late for many people who had contracted it either before means of prevention were understood or just a little careless bad luck. Unlike Covid 19 and it’s many variants, getting HIV was a near certain death sentence, and a long slow gruesome shame filled one at that.

The idea of two men together in some kind of tender interaction became a common theme for me which I painted several times culminating in a gigantic painting called “Suffering Change” which you can see in the Cabinet section of this website. That piece was painted in 2004 and in affect was the end of this run of subject matter and was effectively the end of the AIDS era.

“Sister Eva Destruction”
Oil on panel
40” x 40”
1996
Sister Eva Destruction, whose real name was Todd, was a member of an organization that did volunteer work at events raising money and awareness for HIV and AIDS and people suffering from AIDS. The organization was called The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and still exists today.

To be a member one had to volunteer significant numbers of hours of volunteer work making it a real honor to be a member. And like a Catholic order of nuns that it was clearly parodying, one had to earn one’s habit. In fact, unlike Catholic nuns, members of this order were expected to create their own persona and “look.” One could eventually work their way up through a pecking order not unlike Catholic orders and eventually even become a Pope.

Well, the theatricality and social purpose were a perfect fit for me as a painter. I did several paintings of Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and donated them to fund raisers. This one, however, I decided to keep. Unlike the others, this one was done mostly from life. Todd came to my studio on several occasions and went through the ordeal of putting on his whole persona for me. As such, I became more involved in the piece and with his blessing ended up keeping it for myself.

“Kerry and her Girlfriend”
Oil on panel
6′ x 4′
1996

This was painted painstakingly from life directly on the canvas. I had recently discovered the British painter Lucien Freud. He worked directly from life with very different things to say but with a shared certainly that it could be said with the nude in the grand Western tradition, although with his unique contributions to message and technique. The fact that he didn’t evolve to his mature work until he was in his 50’s did not escape me.

So, this piece, along with a few others, sets out to absorb and integrate some of Freud’s methods and results into my own now well developed way of making art.

The restricted earthy palette, the unabashedly heavily worked parts, the barely held together anatomical correctness along side an almost Cezanne like commitment to compositional structure were all things I saw and admired in Freud’s work and are at play in this piece.

I met Kerry and her girlfriend through my art dealer at the time, Gary. Gary was a campaign organizer for a local low level Democratic bureaucrat. And he was unequivocally an early foot soldier of the culture wars. He was a proud “flamer.” He and a friend would often pull up to the studio with the top down, stereo blaring Broadway show tunes and colorful scarfs blowing in the wind. And being very gregarious, Gary knew everybody in Seattle’s gay scene. Kerry was one of his minions putting up posters, volunteering at fund raisers and doing whatever she could to help advance the liberal cause.

We loved each other from the get go. And being gay, there was less tension in our connection than there might have been otherwise. The painting was her idea. When it was done they loved it even though it is far from flattering, especially of Kerry, the tall figure. I gave the painting to them.

But not long afterwards they broke up and much as she loved the painting, it’s intimacy was too uncomfortable for her to see in her small apartment everyday. So she gave it back to me.

No offense taken. I was delighted to have it back. It’s always a favorite when I hang it in the spa.

Oddly, it looks more than a little like an artist a little younger than me who came to fame 10 years after this was painted. John Currin. Check his work out online and see if you agree.