This daylily was painted entirely using a pencil instead of brushes to apply the paint. The large dots were done using the fresh eraser end repeatedly dipped and dotted. The medium-sized dots were accomplished by sharpening the writing end halfway, so the lead was not quite exposed. The small, bright yellow dots, for the stamen, were made by sharpening the pencil to a point, then rubbing it down to a blunt point. For the effect, it helped that the yellow paint was thicker, as well. I even titled, dated and signed it in dots, but that is in fine tipped artist marker.
Painting is 20″ x 16″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $150 plus postage
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This is a stylized painting of a Stoplight Daylily. It is obvious how this variety earned this name. It is red, yellow and green just like the traffic lights.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $65 plus postage
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This is a stylized painting of a Purple Suspenders Daylily from our yard last Summer. There is a huge ladybug on a leaf in the upper right. This variety blooms late in the season with 7″ to 8″ blooms.
The painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ stretched canvas.
Price: $30 plus postage
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This daylily stands guard at the front of our yard and again at the edge of our patio with its vibrant, hot pink petals and luminous, deep yellow throat. On a sunny day, they almost seem electric. Roland Teich of Teich & McColgan Daylilies & Hostas bred this variety, so it is Hilltown / Peace Valley born, Roland & Robin’s place is just a half block off of Perkasie’s Callowhill, too.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage.
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I decided to just have some fun with the paint last Wednesday and paint a lighter subject, so I painted two daylilies. I used a limited number of colors. “Yin” is based on a Peace Valley Sentinel Daylily, with a Kelly Green and Green Apple split background. On the “Yang” the colors are reversed. I think they make a fun, colorful set. They are each 12″x12″ and are just fine informal, unframed for a sun room or at a beach house, any place you want to spread a little cheer!
Starving artist price: $50 for the pair, plus shipping.
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Daylily blossoms only last for one day, then wilt and die, hence the name. This blossom bloomed over three years ago along the driveway, two residences ago. I photographed it, then processed it in Photoshop to reduce the number of shades of color used in the photo to about 40. I further reduced this number down to 22 shades of paint. Of them, only the yellow, white and two of the shades of green were ready out of a can or tube. The remaining 18 I custom blended. I painted it in the style of the paint by number paintings we did when we were kids, only there were no numbers and there were no pre-printed lines, and it is on a 36″ x 24″ stretched canvas instead of a 14″ X 11″ cardboard. At this size, it makes quite an impact, as it pays homage to a fading pastime.
The painting is acrylic on 36″ x 24″ stretched canvas.
Price: $250 plus postage.
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This is my first photo of a daylily from 2014. The bloom was looking straight at me, dead center in the photo. I superimposed an iris, that is a human iris, onto the bloom. The bloom was the exact shade of yellow my mom used in our living room when she redecorated it. It was the first time she was ever able to redo a whole room at once. The iris is the shade of green she used. I made the background the unique shade of aqua she used. That color became very popular in Golden Valley, MN. The florists my mom used would dye flowers that color for our parties. People would see them at our house or at the florists’ shop while awaiting delivery and request it for themselves. It became known as “B.J. Blue”. My mom’s name was B.J., short for Betty Jane.
Then I asked John Haggerty to help me by making the shape of a camera bezel for the frame on his Shop-Bot. I painted it black and inserted the museum quality print on canvas in the back.
~14-3/4″ diameter x 3-5/8″deep
Price: $350 plus shipping.
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At our house on Front Street in Souderton, I planted a Stoplight Daylily at the end of the driveway by the sidewalk. It is aptly named because of its brilliant red and yellow blossoms and bright green leaves. I am known for not noticing stoplights. At one point, when I was in my 30s, I started to count the red lights I noticed just after I blew through them. I stopped counting at 70, after a few weeks. When I drove my Scion xB for The King’s Jubilee, and we were giving rides home to people, it was customary for my regular passengers to quickly claim the back seat. This included 6’5″ Tony. At any rate, stoplights at midnight are a bit easier to see. Everyone was relieved when I safely arrived home to the one at the end of my drive.
It is subtle, but the background is not true black. It has a hint of blue in it. Also, in person, the stamen appear more orange than they appear in the photo. It is a very dramatic piece.
The painting is acrylic on 24″ x 18″ stretched canvas.
Price: $120 plus postage.
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Another photograph in my Lily Gilding series, this one has been filtered with a yellow “neon glow” then dabbed with touches of orange at the centers of the blooms to signify scent. Bees are especially attracted to the bright colors of the blossoms and filter out the greens. It is said, in fact, that perhaps they only see yellow. They are mostly guided by scent. Hummingbirds are especially attracted to yellows and reds. So this photo is all about the birds and the bees.
Skep
I made the frame out of native PA poplar and ribbed it reminiscent of the traditional bee skeps, then coated it with nine coats of black lacquer. It is museum quality printed on canvas.
The canvas is 24″x24″. The overall dimensions of the frame are 29-3/8″x29-3/8″x2″
This is from a photo of daylilies by our driveway taken in 2007. The “bonnet” is the spent blossom from the previous day. I filtered it to wash most of it to black. The name for this piece is “Widow’s Bonnet”. This is why she is wearing black. It is also why she is surrounded by about a 4″ ring of hammered copper. This represents the “Widow’s Mite” in the Gospel story. Daylilies are the lilies of the field that Jesus was talking about, which we are “to consider, for they do not labor, neither so they spin, but Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Yet they are gone in a day, to be replaced with another equally beautiful bloom the next! The mite was the smallest copper coin with a hole in the middle; it was worth so little. That was all the widow had, yet she gave it to the poor at the Temple collection box. Jesus pointed out that she had given more than all the rich who had gone before and after, because she had given all she had.
So this piece reminds us of these two lessons. There is more than enough to go around every day, if only we share it. Give everything if necessary to make that happen.
This is a photograph that has been altered and museum quality printed on canvas. The frame is hand-hammered copper flashing tacked over a black painted, plywood base. It is 18-3/4″ diameter.
Price: $300 plus shipping
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This is from my Lily Gilding series. Before I painted daylilies, I painted with them. This is a photograph of a Backdraft Daylily, from a couple of summers back, right next to our front step. I modified it using several filters and adjustments, then cropped it just right. I call it Phoenix as it shows the persistence of new life and hope, even in the midst of entropy and crumbling bricks.
The border and frame paint are taken directly from the colors in the photo. Each time you look at it, be emboldened to hope and to work for positive change that we may rise from the ashes of our brokenness to see in each and every man, woman and child, a sister or a brother, worthy of dignity, respect, and care.
This is museum quality printed on canvas. I custom-made the frame from native PA poplar. The canvas is 24″x24″. The overall dimensions with the frame are 27″x27″x2-3/4″. The price is $450 plus shipping. (I have been told the frame is worth that alone.)
Sold.
The person who purchased it calls me every couple of months to thank me again for the beauty and brightness it has added to her home.
I can make another. I have committed to making no more than 10 total. Each are signed and numbered.
I wanted to paint poppies and figured that Georgia O’Keeffe had already done that better than I could ever do, so I tweaked it. This whimsical painting is based on a photograph of wild poppies with the color profile shifted to be similar to black light, or as if they were viewed through black light sunglasses.
Painting is acrylic and Sharpie on 20″ x 16″ stretched canvas.
Price: $200 plus postage
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This is a stylized painting of a Blue Waterlily (nymphaea caerulea). It is also known as a Blue Lotus. It was sacred in ancient Egypt, associated with the sun god Ra. In 2009, it was made illegal in Latvia, Poland, and Russia, for its drug uses. It is floating on the water, of course, which is reflecting the blue sky.
I painted this waterlily using just three colors of paint: Titanium White, Cerulean Blue, and Cadmium Yellow.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $20 plus postage.
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This painting of a single tulip set on the background of a fiery diamond was inspired by the blizzard we experienced in Perkasie, PA on the first full day of Spring where we had over a foot of snow fall. Well, to say it fell is to misstate the situation. Much of the time it was flying sideways. The next day it was over 40º F. As the snow melted, the crocuses were still blooming, the tulip leaves and hyacinth buds had appeared. Sports fans are eagerly anticipating baseball opening day. We have three rapidly melting snow boulders in our front yard, the handiwork of our younger granddaughter, Brigitta.
Other than the stem, the painting was all accomplished using white, red and yellow paint, blending to make all the shades of pink, pale yellow, orange, and hot pink.
Painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $60 plus postage.
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When I set out to paint a purple and yellow waterlily, I thought I was inventing something new, since I had only ever seen white and yellow waterlilies in the wild in my time growing up in Minnesota and Wisconsin. It turns out, they grow in all sorts of colors: violet, blue, red, purple, pink, fuchsia, orange, yellow and white. So, in this case, art imitates life.
Painting is acrylic on 20″ x 16″ stretched canvas.
Price: $200 plus postage
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This painting of a single dahlia blossom was the first time I have been commissioned to do a work in advance. In fact, I was paid, in full, in advance, and given complete artistic freedom. The client, who is our neighbor, only specified the size of the canvas. He sent me photos he had taken of his wife’s prizewinning dahlias. I could choose to do a grouping, a stand, a bouquet or a single. Neither he nor I knew the names of the varieties. The painting was a surprise for his wife’s birthday. I played around with the 10 or so photographs he had given me, until I settled on this: a single blossom on a 20″ x 20″ x 2″ canvas. I painted the entire area of the blossom with Cadmium Yellow as an undercoat. The paint for every petal has some of that yellow blended in it to convey the glow of that blossom. It took me over a week to paint. I painted the 2″ edges Cadmium Yellow. There is no need for a frame. I coated it with museum quality, clear spray acrylic to protect it. Dave was thrilled with it. He told me his wife Tammy is thrilled with it. I had named the painting, “Good Morning Sunshine!” Tammy saw it and recognized the blossom immediately as a “Sugartown Sunrise” Dahlia.
This painting really makes an impact at four feet wide and three free tall! It was such a beautiful weekend, I decided to accompany my wife and daughter to the Franconia Township Fall Fest, where they were selling their wares. Bethann makes clothing, purses and quilts. Hilary makes jewelry. I went along to help set up and take down and took this painting, along with my good easel and supplies, to work on it Saturday 11 to 6. Last week, when our daughter, April, saw it, she said it looked trippy. I said, “Yeah, sunflowers on acid.” She said, “More like the artist was on acid.” Full disclaimer here: neither one of us has ever done acid. (At least I know I never have. I mean, not that I remember.)
Illustration of Vogel’s model for n = 1 … 500
Sometimes, while I am painting, I learn more about my subjects. April mentioned the Fibonacci Sequence in the pattern of the florets in the heads of Sunflowers. In 1979, Helmut Vogel devised a formula based on it. His formula looks like this:
On Saturday, Hilary also mentioned the Fibonacci Number. She has a friend who gets excited about all of the different places it shows up. I mentioned that Sunflowers always face East to greet the rising of the Sun. She replied, “Except when the sun goes down, they turn and face each other.” Another person told me that later that day. I don’t know if that is true or just a romantic folk tale.
I had so much fun interaction with folks, especially the little ones, at the festival. At one point, about a half dozen 4-foot tall girls were walking down the path in front of my easel. They all happened to look left at the same moment, and in unison exclaimed, “Whoa! That’s beautiful!” That’s when I knew the painting was a success.
This work was what I did over the canvas I re-primed after giving up on the Indonesian floating market painting I had stewed over all Summer.
The painting is acrylic and marker on 48″ x 36″ stretched canvas.
I painted a Lavender Sunflower for our granddaughter, Isabella, for Valentine’s Day 2017. She loved it. Several of her paintings and a couple of mine that I had given the girls were destroyed by their wicked landlord, when he illegally evicted their family. They lost all of their toys and games, and household goods. The judge has awarded them restitution and punitive damages, that they are waiting to receive. I am painting simple daylilies and fantastical flowers to sell at reasonable prices so we can help replace some of the things they lost, as we find them at yard sales and thrift stores.
This painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
This is a monochromatic painting of me and my wife, Bethann. It was done in the spirit of the old Instamatic, black & white snapshots of the ’60s. In that spirit, neither one of us is very happy with the outcome. It should probably have sticky black corners put on it and be inserted in a large photo album, to be viewed at our funerals. It does look better in person.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $80 plus postage.
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As the title indicates, this is my 5th self-portrait. I did this one using only two colors: Dioxazine Purple and Cadmium Yellow, with a Titanium White border and sometimes mixing them with the Titanium White for shading. The portrait is an accurate portrayal of my current mustache length, glasses and hairstyle. However my skin is never that pale, and I have never quite managed purple for my hair: blue,yes; but not purple.
Painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $90 plus postage.
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This is my fourth self portrait. I painted it while everyone was neglecting my carefully set up display at Teich & McColgan Daylily & Hosta Farm last weekend. No one wandered through to see my more than 80 original works for sale at free admission. Once I am dead these works will be worth a mint! Van Gogh and I have much similar stories. We were both prison ministers. We were both disapproved by our older brothers and fathers. We both suffered from severe depressive disorder. The difference is that I don’t let my brother commit me to an insane asylum. I told him to go to hell and stopped talking to him. Vincent Van Gogh painted 46 self portraits before he committed suicide.
I have been painting for 17 months so far. Other artists tell me that I capture the ‘essence’ of my subjects; and that my paintings carry ’emotion’. I just know that I couldn’t do this before I had six strokes and now I can. Now it lowers my blood pressure. This is more a caricature of me than a portrait – but, oh well.
Painting is 16″ x 20″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $150 plus postage
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I’ve felt alienated in my own country since Trump’s inauguration. He is trying to dismantle the entire Bill of Rights using executive orders. So I painted myself as an alien, but with a wide open eye. We are watching. We are taking names. We are organizing for the revolution. I don’t mean for the Democrats to regain control. I mean for the capitalists to finally lose control. Trump is exposing what capitalism is really about. The Democrats worked hand in glove to put him in power and are doing little to obstruct his fascism. The true patriots, the ones who are now feeling like strangers in the land of their birth or land of their choice, will rise up to set things right.
The painting is acrylic on 16″ x 20″ stretched canvas.
Price: $200 plus postage
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Based on the first snapshot of my wife and me as newlyweds in July 1975, leaning on Poindexter, our 1967 Chevy Impala, in front of our ‘garden level’ apartment at 1900 Upton Avenue North, Minneapolis, MN 55411. I was 20. Bethann was 19. It was on the corner where my mom always said, “Lock your doors, bad neighborhood,” as we entered the city, growing up. We were young and in love, so none of that mattered. During the six months we lived there, our car was stolen. My sexy Oshkosh overalls were stolen off the clothesline in the laundry room and there was an attempted break in into the apartment on Thanksgiving.
Our first child was conceived there. It was wonderful!
This painting is acrylic on 24″ x 24″ stretched canvas. It is not for sale. It was my Christmas gift to my wife this year.
On June 8, 2016, I had open heart surgery to replace my aortic valve, which had been damaged by an infection. It all happened quite suddenly. We only discovered the damage on April 4, when I had what we thought was a stroke. It turned out to be a severe TIA. It was serendipitous in that it triggered a battery of tests that uncovered the weakness in my heart. It needed fixing quickly. The doctors at Penn expedited my case. I had my heart catheterization on May 9 to make sure I didn’t need any bypasses or stents.
At 6am on June 8, Bethann & I went to the Hospital at U. Penn. and checked me in to pre-op. Later that day, I was so happy to wake up alive! Bethann told me that my first words were: “Where is my keyboard? I want my keyboard.” I wanted to write. Once I got my keyboard, I couldn’t focus to write anyway. I haven’t been able to focus to write or to paint since the surgery. My days have been full of visiting nurse visits, doctor visits, walks, naps. I have researched subjects to paint. I did one sketch that was less than satisfactory. I finally decided to start over where I started in April; with a self-portrait. That is why I call this painting “Reset”. I’m using it to reset my creativity to get back on track writing, painting, editing, etc.
This painting is based on a photo I took using my Mac just before my surgery. My granddaughter Isabella saw my hair blowing around in my face when we were riding in the back of their car. She said I looked like a rock star with my hair in my eyes. I had already started painting this when she said this, but had not painted the face yet. In the photograph, the computer screen is reflected in my sunglasses. I decided to paint an opening door, instead.
Painting is 24″ x 18″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $300 plus Postage
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Shortly after we moved into a tiny house (500 sq. ft.) across the street from our granddaughters, I painted them life-sized on a canvas and mounted it on the outside of the bathroom door. The bathroom door is what one sees when one enters the front door of the house. I started painting this one of our grandsons last year. I finally finished it this week. It is based on a black and white photo of The Three Stooges. I “colorized” it and superimposed the boys’ heads on it, painted it on canvas and glued it to our bedroom door. The landlord and lady should not be concerned. I used clay based paste which remains water-soluble forever and washes off cleanly with warm water.
This is a painting of our youngest grandson with my cat. It is based on a photo from several years ago, when Elijah was just a little boy and Skittles was just a kitten.
Original painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Marie is a former co-worker of Bethann. She and her husband, Pete, retired to Lewes, Delaware, a part of the state affectionately referred to as LSD, Lower Slower Delaware. It has a small, historically preserved, shopping district with an independent, used book and novelty store, a toy store, ice cream shop, several restaurants, antique and art dealers, etc. There is a super quilting fabric shop, close to the beach. The beach is on an inlet, so no rough surf or undertow. It is calm and perfect for little children and old folk, whose knees don’t like to get knocked about. There are vineyards and wildlife sanctuaries to tour. There are a pool and a pond in Pete and Marie’s community. Lewes just happens to be the same town where Fr. Boniface and Khouriye Joyce Black started St. Andrew’s, and where our friends, Fr. Herman & Khouriye Vera Acker now serve. I helped build and design the Holy Table for St. Andrew’s as well as the side tables. I made the icons for the mission before they had a building. So this falls into the “small world” category.
But, back to our story. If it were not for Pete & Marie, we would not be able to have any sort of vacation for the last several years. They invite us down. We have a great time with them. They are a great, loving couple. We have gotten to know their daughter, Jen, as well. She lives not far from us, in PA. Pete & Marie have been married for over 40 years. One day, Pete left the house with our son-in-law, Vince, me, and our two granddaughters to walk over to the pool on the other side of the pond. We hear the garage door open and Marie holler, “I love you, Pete!” He hollers back, “I love you, Marie!” I look at him. He said, “We always kiss each other whenever one of us leaves the house. I forgot to. So …” Now that’s sweet.
This painting in acrylic on 14″ x 11″ stretched canvas. It is not for sale. Jen is taking it down to her parents for us as a “thank you” gift.
Anthony McNeal is a dear friend. I don’t know how long ago we met. He was homeless. I was leading The King’s Jubilee, serving meals in center City Philadelphia. Tony managed to go to Philadelphia Community College to receive several certifications in computer use and maintenance. He is also a skilled, bicycle repairman and a cook. He got a job cooking at Tindley Temple UMC‘s kitchen which provided meals a couple of days a week to homeless people. He moved into an apartment with another man who had been homeless, when he got a Section 8 apartment, to share expenses. Tony started to help us serve on the street, when he was still on the street himself, and continued when he moved into the apartment. He was always a cool head to help maintain order and help keep everyone safe. When the city required food safety training, he took the course with me, so he could take charge when I could not make it.
When my health took a turn for the worse, he would come up to our home in Souderton and do the heavy chores that needed doing. Many times, he helped me cook the soup for the street or took over the task entirely, at our house. Sometimes, he brought his uncle, Steven Johnson, to help, as well. Tony has accompanied me to WXPN’s Exponential Music Festival for a few years. He also came with me to Philly Socialists’ retreat in West Virginia a couple of years ago. He is always happier when he is serving, so he pitched in and cooked the whole Labor Day weekend.
Tony is a joy to know. Everyone of our friends and family who has met him, became his friend, too.
A few years ago, Tony invited me to his birthday party at his dad’s house. When we arrived, they were surprised by the fact that I am white. They asked Tony why he failed to mention this. He said, “I forgot. I don’t think of Cranford as white.”
The painting is acrylic on 14″ x 11″ stretched canvas.
Tony is still not happy with me about how I cut off the top of his head in this painting. It communicates his height. I was standing that close when I took his photo in the hallway at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. I also gave him more white hair than he had yet. He is getting there.
SOLD. I gave it to Tony’s daughter and granddaughter.
I never met Jamie. I met her husband, Mike, who is our son-in-law Vincent’s good friend and work mate. Mike is a bright, young man with a quick wit and a curious mind with diverse interests. He is energetic and hard-working. He loves Jamie. We have had some rough, Nor’easter blizzards that hit our corner of Bucks County, Pennsylvania hard the end of February into March.
Jamie had sleep apnea and used a machine to assist her breathing at night. The storm knocked the power out in Mike and Jamie’s apartment during the night. Jamie’s machine lost power. She stopped breathing and died at just 34 years old. Her husband lost his wife. Her parents lost their daughter. Her brother lost his sister. Her niece lost her aunt. I remember when my sister died, my dad sobbing and saying, “Parents are not supposed to bury their children.”
Corporations have battery back-ups for phone systems and hard drives. Many of us have battery back-ups for Fios phones. Why are battery back-ups not standard issue for life-sustaining equipment? It seems like a small, additional cost. We have the technology. It’s too late for Jamie Standish, but perhaps in her memory, we could get the ball rolling to improve the standard of care. Call me a curmudgeon, but I think we can care for our citizens at least as well as we care for their billing data.
Rest in peace, Jamie, only with us for a short time: August 11, 1983 to March 2, 2018.
This is acrylic on 10″ x 10″ stretched canvas. It is not for sale. It was painted in memory of Jamie as a gift to Mike, using my “heroes palette”.
I met Ethel Haanpaa in 1971 when I started dating her granddaughter, Becky Shostrom. I was 16. Becky was 17. Becky lived in her own apartment upstairs from her grandma Ethel and her step-grandpa Emil in their chocolate brown duplex on 25-1/2 Ave. No. in Minneapolis. Becky and I were both members at Fourth Baptist Church, which was then located at 21st and Fremont, just 4-1/2 blocks away. We were extremely involved in the youth group and in the church, which was extremely fundamentalist. Ethel was a member of First Baptist Church, downtown, which was more “liberal”. Emil didn’t go to church. He was a retired, union taxi and bus driver. He was a character. We disagreed on just about everything, but we had great, friendly discussions. I learned so much about honesty, character, tolerance and love from this old couple and their friends.
On the morning of the day of my sister’s funeral, I went into Minneapolis to visit Grama Ethel Haanpaa at the Lutheran Home, the high-rise retirement community where she had lived for several years. Ethel was not our grandma by blood, but by adoption. She was Becky Shostrom’s grandma. I had been engaged to Becky when I was a senior in high school until finals week of my freshman year of college. That’s when she told me she had fallen in love with the bus driver on the spring break choir tour. Grama Ethel and her husband, Emil, kept inviting me to all of the special occasions at their chocolate brown house on 25-1/2 Avenue North. We had become good friends, along with Ethel’s first husband, Al Shostrom, and his girlfriend, Mamie. We were a strange lot. When Bethann and I got engaged, I introduced her to Ethel and Emil. Ethel welcomed Bethann to the family with open arms. Emil passed away shortly after we moved to PA in 1977. Ethel became another grandma to our four girls. We exchanged Christmas gifts and birthday cards, letters and phone calls and always visited her when we got back to Minnesota.
When I got to the Lutheran Home, I did not find Ethel in her apartment. I inquired at the desk and discovered that she was in the hospice care unit. I visited her and can remember our conversation like it was yesterday. She told me that she didn’t want to take the pain meds, because they made her befuddled. She was dying and didn’t see any point wasting what little time she had left being befuddled. She said she needed to settle her accounts and needed a clear head to do that. She then recounted to me what she considered to be her failings and sins. Now she had been a Baptist all her life. Baptists don’t do confession. But I heard hers. We cried together. I assured her that God loved her and she was forgiven for all her failings and regrets. At the time, I was an Orthodox Christian layperson. When I got home, I told our priest, Father Boniface, about how I had heard her confession and assured her of God’s forgiveness. He said, “You did good.” As I left to go to my sister’s funeral, I knew that this was the last time I would see dear, sweet Ethel. She would never bless my “pointed little head” again. In fact, that was the last conversation she had. She slipped into coma and passed away a few days later, on December 7, 2000, at age 92.
Painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $80 plus postage.
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This portrait of Jim Morrison of The Doors is based on his mugshot from an arrest in Las Vegas on Jan. 28, 1968, when he was 24. It showed up on Facebook a few years ago. I saw it and shared it with the comment: “The most beautiful mugshot I have ever seen!” Several days ago, it came up again in my memories. I shared it again, with the same comment. He is disheveled, but he is staring right through the camera to and through any and all who would ever view the print produced from the film contained therein.
James Douglas Morrison was born on December 8, 1943, in Melbourne, Florida. His father was a rear admiral in the US Navy, so the family moved around a lot. It has been said this is why he had difficulty maintaining relationships. After graduating from UCLA film school, he helped form a rock band and named it The Doors for Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, a reference to psychedelic drug use. He was the lead singer. He was a songwriter and a poet. In a couple of years, they had a smash hit. Jim developed an alcohol dependency, which at times interfered with performances. During a concert in Miami, on March 1, 1969, he tried to start a riot by shouting obscenities and provocations out to the crowd. He was convicted of indecent exposure and profanity, and on October 30, 1970, was sentenced to six months in prison and a $500 fine. He was free on $50,000 bond.
In March 1971, he went to Paris to join Pamela Courson, his sometimes traveling companion. He took long walks and wrote poetry. On July 3, 1971, she found him dead in the bathtub in his apartment. No autopsy was performed. Heart failure was listed as the cause of death. He was 27.
I named this painting Stranger for his song. I have never been a huge Doors fan per se, but I have loved several of their songs. I just was not that aware of who was singing them on the radio. The one that I have always, truly identified with is People Are Strange.
Painting is black & white acrylic on 24″ x 18″ stretched canvas.
Price: $250 plus postage
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Daphne Anne Vella was born in Silema, Malta on August 26, 1964. In 1985, she married attorney Peter Caruana Galizia. They had three sons, Matthew, Andrew, and Paul. In 1990, the family moved to Bidnija in Mosta. She was a political activist, an investigative journalist, and a blogger. Matthew, also, became an investigative journalist.
Daphne Caruana Galizia was fearless and tenacious in her pursuit of truth and justice. She was arrested several times. The front door of her house was set ablaze. Another time the family dog’s throat was slit and laid across the front doorstep. Threatening notes were tacked to her front door, or faxed or emailed to her, telling her to back down on stories or her life was in danger. Her car was set on fire. She did not back down. She was routing out corruption in Malta that had (and has) international, financial and environmental consequences. Some news outlets were too intimidated to carry her stories. In 2008, she set up her own blog, Running Commentary, to be unrestrained in publishing her own stories and opinion pieces.
She revealed on Running Commentary that a prominent Maltese government minister was entangled with unsavory dealings with Panama and New Zealand. This proved to be an embarrassment and true. It was the tip of the iceberg of the Panama Papers. By the time of Daphne’s assassination, there were 48 libel suits outstanding against her. There were also threats intimidating several media outlets, some of which were dropped within hours of her death. Her work in revealing the Panama Papers eventually brought down the government of Iceland and implicated banks and government officials around the world.
On October 16, 2017, at about 3 pm, Ms. Caruana Galizia was assassinated in a car bomb attack while she was driving her leased Peugeot 108 near their home.
In May 2017 Pilatus Bank’s owner and chairman, Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, sued Daphne Caruana Galizia in an Arizona court in his own name and in the name of Pilatus Bank. The case was for $40 million in damages. Ms. Caruana Galizia was never notified about it and it was withdrawn within hours of her assassination. The prime minister has refused to commission an investigation into her death. To this date, her assassination has not been solved. She has received over two dozen posthumous awards and honors in Europe and America for her integrity, and her good and heroic quest for truth as a journalist. There is a thorough article about her story in The New Yorker.
This painting has a red edge, so like the sad, old joke about newspapers, this is “black and white and red all ’round.”
The painting is acrylic on 24″ x 24″ stretched canvas.
Price: $320 plus postage.
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Since my painting of Aaron Swartz, The Ghost in the Machine, was so well received I painted a 24″ x 24″ black and white portrait of Nina Simone. My hope is that you will find it to be as stark and as powerful as Hozier’s tribute to her and other singers in the US civil rights movement is.
Nina Simone (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003) was born in Tryon, North Carolina to a Methodist minister and a handyman and occasional preacher. She was named Eunice Kathleen Waymon. She learned how to play piano by ear when she was three. She played the piano in church as a child, but did not sing in the choir. By the time she graduated high school as valedictorian of her class, she was an accomplished classical and jazz pianist, as well as a singer. The townspeople raised money to pay for her to go to Julliard, however her family had moved to Philadelphia, so she applied to Curtis instead. They rejected her application. She felt this was due to racism. This killed her hope of being a great, black, woman, classical pianist. She started teaching music to get by. She also started to play and sing at some nightclubs. One night she decided it would help her career to change her name. She chose “Nina” which means “little girl” in Spanish and “Simone” after the actor Simone Signoret.
She wanted her singing to count for something, so she chose and wrote songs to record that addressed racism, lynching and civil and human rights. This was a risk at the time for a young, black woman in the 1950s and 60s. Her recording career spanned four decades. Her rendition of Strange Fruit is haunting.
“We never talked about men or clothes. It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution – real girls’ talk.”
Nelson Mandela gets credit for ending apartheid in South Africa, but he couldn’t have done it without Steve Biko, and many others inspired by him, who put their lives on the line. Part of his story is told in the movie Cry Freedom! starring Kevin Kline and Denzel Washington. He was beaten to death by the police while being held in custody for the crime of teaching black children to read.
Biko (December 18, 1946 – September 12, 1977) was also responsible for starting the Black Consciousness movement. In the US, this manifested itself as “Black is Beautiful”.
Steven Bantu Biko was also the inspiration for Peter Gabriel’s hit song Biko.
This portrait is in my “Heroes” series.
Painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage.
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Marielle Franco (27 July 1979 – 14 March 2018) was shot to death, along with her driver, Anderson Pedro Gomes, on March 14 of this year, in her home district, where she served as a city councillor of the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro for the Socialism and Liberty Party from January 2017 until her death. She had just delivered a speech against police brutality and extrajudicial killings. She died of 3 shots to the head, one to the neck. The bullets used to kill them were Federal bullets. They tried to concoct a story that they had been stolen from a post office facility where they had been stored, but the Post Office would not cooperate with the Federal Government’s false story.
Marielle has been working tirelessly and cheerfully for years for the rights of the poor, ever since a close friend was killed by a stray bullet in 2000. She rose out of the favelas; and went to college and university on scholarships as a single mother. She had a daughter in 1998. She wrote her master’s thesis on taking back the favelas from the gangs. In 2007, she entered politics by working for State Representative Marcelo Freixo. She identified as bi-sexual. On the City Council, she had fought against gender violence and tried to create a day of lesbian visibility in August 2017. It failed 19-17. She was planning on marrying her long-term partner, Mônica Tereza Benício, in September 2019.
Marielle was politically savvy and knew she needed well placed friends. She became friends with Glenn Greenwald. He listed what he referred to as the “most important subjects to cover” regarding Franco’s assassination stating: “Her relentless and brave activism against the most lawless police battalions, her opposition to military intervention, and, most threateningly of all, her growing power as a black, gay woman from the favela seeking not to join Brazil’s power structure, but to subvert it.”
The Federal Police sadly proved the truth of Marielle’s last speech by so immediately assassinating her and her driver. But as Medgar Evers said, “You can kill a man, but you cannot kill an idea.” Sadly, in the era of Trump, we still need to say it: Women are equal.
Painting is acrylic on 12″ x 16″ stretched canvas.
Price: $120 plus postage.
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I painted this portrait of Rachel Carson while sitting at a picnic table in Menlo Park at Perkasie Pennsylvania’s Earth Day observance, yesterday. Earlier in the week, on Kid’s Corner, on WXPN Radio, I had heard the history of Earth Day and learned that there would never have been an Earth Day had it not been for Rachel Carson, and her scientific insights and tenacity. Yet she died in 1964 and the first Earth Day was in 1970. It was her book, Silent Spring, which had so caught Sen. Gaylord Nelson’s imagination and empowered his environmentalism.
It was the first time such a book, a scientific and fairly technical book had caught the imagination of the general population of the US. The title was the thing that did it. Rachel Carson was a marine biologist and a chemist and had noticed how the pesticides, particularly DDT, accumulated as it traveled up the food chain to the larger, predatory birds, like hawks, vultures and eagles. One of its effects was to reduce the presence of calcium, so that the egg shells were so soft that they would be crushed in the nest during incubation. Theoretically, with the continued overuse of these pesticides, we could reach the point where we would no longer hear birdsong in the Spring. Another effect was actually making malaria resistant mosquitoes. She testified before the Senate. For this, she was mocked and attacked for being a single woman. Her character was questioned. She was slandered, even though she had made sacrifices to support her widowed mother and sisters through the Great Depression and adopted her orphaned nephew, etc., because she had a good income from her books.
The first Earth Day was not a convenient, fun event on a Saturday or Sunday to remind us to Reuse, Reduce, Recycle (which is a dubious tactic which only slows the path of consumer goods to ever-growing landfills). It was on a Wednesday. Over 20,000,000 Americans took part. No one really knows for sure how many. It was organized and ‘documented’ before the days of the internet or cellphones in schools of all levels. Many turned it into Earth Week, like the University of Minnesota did, with a week-long environmental “teach-in” and fair. I helped organize our Earth Day (April 22) at Carl Sandburg Junior High in Golden Valley, Minnesota. We started by hundreds of us, who normally rode the bus to school, walked and picked up litter as we came in and as we went home. That day, about half of the classes were taught outdoors and the lessons involved environmental, conservation or ecological themes. About 100 of us vowed to permanently abandon the buses and either bicycle or walk for the rest of the school year. This actually did reduce emissions as most of these were students who were those involved in after school activities who would quite often get special activity bus rides home, which now could be eliminated.
Earth Day was the closest thing that the US had ever had to general strike. Pres. Nixon was already under pressure from the Watergate investigation. Earth Day/Week scared him to death. He knew he had to do something about this. By July, he had started the EPA. He knew he could not survive in office if he did not respond to the people on this. DDT was banned. Emission and water purity standards were established. Mileage standards were imposed Speed limits were reduced. Air and water quality dramatically improved. Cancers and other diseases were reduced by millions! Now we have a buffoon in the White House who is trying to undo all of that! And we have a yarn bombing on a Saturday in the park instead of Earth Day.
Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1907, on her family’s farm near Springdale, PA. She died of complications of breast cancer in her home in Silver Spring, MD, April 14, 1964. This portrait is in my “Heroes” series.
Painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $125 plus postage.
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Ernesto Che Guevara was born on June 14, 1928. (My birthday in June 14, 1955.) His early life is documented in the book and movie: “The Motorcycle Diaries”, about his travels from one end of South America to the other on a motorcycle. This trip was formative in his education as a revolutionary. He became a medical doctor first. In 1955, Fidel Castro’s brother Raul introduced them, and he joined the revolution in Cuba. On June 2, 1959, he married Aleida March. After he witnessed what Dulles’ CIA did to dismantle the popularly elected socialist governments of Guatemala and Honduras, he persuaded Harvard educated Fidel Castro that he would need to maintain a benign dictatorship to resist the dirty tricks and subversion of the American government with their interference in other nations’ elections.Perhaps our chickens are coming home to roost.
In 1965, then he joined the revolution in Kinshasa, Congo. In 1966, he joined the revolution in Bolivia. He was captured by the CIA on October 8, 1967, and summarily executed the next day. So much for human rights and due process and The Geneva Convention.
Che was a passionate man. He was in the fight for love of the people, not for personal gain or some dogmatic or idealized view of proving a point. I am sick to death of the communist, socialist and anarchist groups in the US who are full of history nerds and armchair philosophers who don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. Che gave his life in service to nations. Because of what he did, thousands, perhaps millions of people were given a shot at life who otherwise would not have done.
“If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.”
“Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” – both by El Che
There was nothing ridiculous about Che’s love for the common people and his passionate struggle to liberate them.
Painting is 12″x12″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $60 plus postage
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Mumia Abu Jamal had been a great journalist for WHYY Radio 91.1 FM, the Philadelphia public radio station affiliated with NPR. He was a regular contributor to 91 Report, the local evening news, in the late 1970s. He didn’t pull any punches in his coverage of police corruption, racism and brutality. The police framed him for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. They disallowed testimony from the only impartial eyewitness. They paid a hooker, who wasn’t at the scene, to testify against Mumia. So Mumia was found guilty and given a death sentence. It has since been commuted to a life sentence, without parole. He remains the US’ most famous political prisoner.
I chose to paint him as he appeared as a young man, prior to his incarceration. You can learn more about his case from MOVE’s website.
Painting is 12″x12″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Price: $80 plus postage
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My playmates for the first six years of my life were my sister Sue Ann and our neighbor across the street, David Ericson. They were two years older than I was. I was the youngest of four in my family. David was the youngest of four in his family. There were other children in the neighborhood, but these were my closest friends and constant companions. Our family built a bigger house and moved two miles away in Golden Valley, MN, the summer between kindergarten and first grade, but we stayed in touch. We spent 4th of Julys together and got together around Christmas and did some other outings, as well. We ended up going to the same high school: Robbinsdale Senior High.
When we were little and playing cowboys and Indians, David always managed to get killed right outside his back door. He would lay there for a moment then he would get up and run into the kitchen and pour some ketchup on his face and lie back down; you know, to add bloody realism. The next time we would come by, he would still be lying there, but he would be scraping the ketchup off with potato chips and eating them. You just can’t waste food like that! There were children starving in Africa.
David’s parents, Lester and Lois prayed for our family daily and brought us kids to church when my folks didn’t go, and to vacation Bible school, to their little Bible church in North Minneapolis. Lois particularly prayed for me daily from the time she heard my mom was pregnant with me until the day she died in December, 2008. I played with David’s toys while he was in school and my mom was working for the 1960 Census. The Ericsons’ house was the safest place I knew as a child. Playing with David’s Lincoln Logs in the middle of the living room floor with Mrs. Ericson in the kitchen was as good as life could get.
David grew up to be a serious, well-mannered, Christian, young man. He graduated RHS, Class of 1971. He decided to take a year off to do a short-term missionary assignment with Wickliffe Bible Translators, helping his sister and brother-in-law, Jim and Carol Daggett, in Peru, instead of starting college. While there, he was accompanying a girl on a flight to Quito, to go to a hospital for an emergency surgery. It was Christmas Eve. The flight went down and we did not know for three weeks what had happened. Finally, we learned that only one German girl survived. The plane had broken up in mid-air in a bad storm. Pieces of the fuselage had fallen from the sky. Her mother died in the seat next to her. She was carrying her wedding cake on her lap. That helped save her. A tribe of natives who were known to be cannibals took her in and treated her wounds. She was finally found and rescued. So we lost David. He died on a mission of mercy. He was Les and Lois Ericson’s only son.
In 2000, my sister Sue Ann committed suicide. I just remember being so much happier and four and saying, “Alison, can you help Sue Ann and me cross the street so we can play with David?”
As I painted this portrait, I reminisced of a time before my birth. I recalled Grama Dodier’s life from when she was born as a “half-breed” on the prairie of Minnesota in 1880, to when I interviewed her when I was a 12-year-old in the Spring of 1968. I still have a clear vision of her log cabin and her excitement at her French, trapper dad arriving home after a weeks’ long hunting and trading expedition. I can visualize the scene as freshly now as then of her first vision of a motorized vehicle. It was steam-powered. I asked her if her daughters were flappers during the “Roaring 20s”. She laughed. She told me she helped make Irene’s dress. The times had changed and she and her husband had moved to the city (Minneapolis).
I have no photos of Grama Dodier. She is not a relative, but I carry her memories. She was a neighbor’s (two blocks away) mother. I painted her portrait from 49-year-old memories. It is truly amazing how quickly things have changed. She witnessed the first automobiles and now we were heading to the moon. She was an outcast for being a “half-breed’ as a child and young mother. By the 1950s, no one noticed her race because of her French last name. Her daughters married well. She could pass, but the Blacks and the Native Americans were still struggling in Minnesota.
I learned much from Grama Dodier and was careful to preserve these memories as a living link to the past. It is now 2017, so I have a link going back 137 years.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $80 plus postage
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John Winston Ono Lennon (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was a co-founder of The Beatles and was half of one of the most successful songwriting duos of all time with Paul McCartney. Imagine is nothing if not a communist anthem.
For those of us who grew up in the 60s, there are several events that are etched in our minds. Everyone knows where they were when they saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Everyone knows where they were when they heard the news that John had been shot and killed.
We still have his music and we have lots of work to do.
After the Soviet Union broke up, Abkhazia produced postage stamps with Groucho Marx and John Lennon on them and sold frameable collector sheets with the caption. “The New Marx & Lennon” on the sleeve. I own one. What is funny about this is that both Groucho Marx and John Lennon were Marxists. So I painted a set of portraits of all four of them.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage.
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V. I. Lenin (April 22, 1870 – January 21, 1924) was the revolutionary founder of the Marxist Soviet Union in Russia. The Russian Revolution was an ambitious undertaking and the Soviet Union was an amazing experiment. In the US, the cliché is that communism failed, since the USSR fell.That’s funny, since they don’t seem to draw that conclusion about capitalism looking at 17 trillion dollars debt, millions homeless, countless starving, children in poverty, senior citizens with college debt, endless wars, etc.
No. What was accomplished by Lenin and company was amazing! They took a pre-industrial, feudal economy, and dragged it into the 20th century, turning it into a major, industrial and scientific powerhouse. Russia became a leader in medicine, space, agriculture, education, in a few short decades! And they did this for ALL of their people, not just a wealthy élite. So what did the west do? Threaten them with total annihilation, forcing them to waste resources on weapons and defense.
I chose a less familiar photo of Lenin to portray him. We recognize him more readily without the hat, seeing his bald head. I liked the wool worker’s cap better. I thought it better conveyed his heart and the heart of socialism.
Set of 4: Marx & Marx, Lenin & Lennon
After the Soviet Union broke up, Abkhazia produced postage stamps with Groucho Marx and John Lennon on them and sold frameable collector sheets with the caption. “The New Marx & Lennon” on the sleeve. I own one. What is funny about this is that both Groucho Marx and John Lennon were Marxists. So I painted a set of portraits of all four of them.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage.
Fill out the form below so we can arrange payment and delivery. I take PayPal, so all credit and debit cards are accepted.
Groucho Marx was the professional name for Julius Henry Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977). He was a writer, comedian, singer, stage, movie and television star. He made 13 films with his brothers Chico and Harpo and a few with Zeppo as well. He was a master of the paraprosdokian.
Late in life, Groucho became friends with Elton John and Alice Cooper. He appeared in a production of Jesus Christ: Superstar of Elton John’s. When it came to the crucifixion, he asked if it ended well. He said this would not make his Jewish friends happy.
“Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.”
Set of 4: Marx & Marx, Lenin & Lennon
After the Soviet Union broke up, Abkhazia produced postage stamps with Groucho Marx and John Lennon on them and sold frameable collector sheets with the caption. “The New Marx & Lennon” on the sleeve. I own one. What is funny about this is that both Groucho Marx and John Lennon were Marxists. So I painted a set of portraits of all four of them.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage
Fill out the form below so we can arrange payment and delivery. I take PayPal, so all credit and debit cards are accepted.
When one “Bings” Karl Marx, the first thing that comes up is: “Scientist – Karl Marx was a German-born scientist, philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist.” One thing is for certain, a lot of misinformation has been circulated about him and what he taught, in capitalist countries. The first word in the description is the most important, however, and, in the end, science always wins, because it is reality. Science does not play favorites, does not discriminate on who your relatives were or how rich your parents were. Thermonuclear war will kill you just as dead whether you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth or in a mud hut. Global warming will flood you, starve you, burn you, impoverish, kill you, no matter how many billions of dollars you amass. Science is science. Facts are facts. Alt-nothing! It’s time to share! It’s simple justice! It’s human survival. It’s better for all of us. It’s more secure and happier for all of us.
“There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery.” – Karl Marx
Set of Four: Marx & Marx, Lenin & Lennon
After the Soviet Union broke up, Abkhazia produced postage stamps with Groucho Marx and John Lennon on them and sold frameable collector sheets with the caption. “The New Marx & Lennon.” I own one. What is funny about this is that both Groucho Marx and John Lennon were Marxists. So I painted a set of portraits of all four of them.
The painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage
Fill out the form below so we can arrange payment and delivery. I take PayPal, so all credit and debit cards are accepted.
Mohandas K. Gandhi (Oct. 2, 1869 – Jan.30, 1948) became known as the Mahatma or the “Great Soul” due to his wisdom in leading the people of India in non-violent resistance against British colonial rule in the 1930s and 40s. Gandhi was a great teacher. He wrote many books to train the people for the inner discipline necessary for non-violent civil disobedience. He drew on the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jesus Christ, and Mohammed. He was regarded as deeply spiritual, yet he professed faith in no deity or particular religion, saying: “My uniform experience has informed me that there is no other God than Truth.”
It was through Gandhi’s correspondence with two different actors in the resistance to Hitler that I first connected with him; that was Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Germany and Simone Weil in France. This led me to read his biography and most of his works. I had to learn a fair amount of Hindi to understand them. I came to truly revere the man and fully embrace his philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience.
“I object to violence because, when it appears to do good, it is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”
Painting is acrylic on 12″ x 12″ stretched canvas.
Price: $100 plus postage.
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