$200
Bird’s Got the Word no. 8
Calliope no. 10
Rene and Georgette Magritte, with their Dog After the War
The title taken from Paul Simon’s song, which was taken from a photograph by Belgian photographer Lothar Wolleh, which was allegedly taken during WWII, but likely taken some time in the 1960’s. I think of this painting as related to other paintings I’ve done called Going To Shubuta, about my ancestors fleeing Natchez, Mississippi during the Civil War.
Yellow House
Cutter
Taconic
Shubuta xi.
Someday I will try to work one of the these up in oil, but so far the image is too turbulent, shifty, and oil doesn’t lend itself to improvisation for me – or I don’t lend myself to planning things out. A corny metaphor, but drawing can be like jazz – pick a key and start playing. Oil painting is operatic. Try to improvise an opera and you’ve got a nasty mess on your hands. I admire painters who seem to truly improvise complex paintings in oil. Amy Sillman, Tim Hyman, R.B. Kitaj, Nicole Eisenman, Ken Kiff to name a few.
River Water
Number 29
Milk Jug
Old South Snow Globe
11″ x 14″
When you shake it, instead of pretend snow swirling around, it’s cotton. Shortly after I painted this, I realized I had unconsciously absorbed the image from this painting by the magnificent Argentinian painter Daniel Santoro.