Sometimes my cat, Skittles, dreams. I can tell, because his paws are moving in order as if he were running. All cats have some things in common. It seems, all cats, even lions, tigers panthers, and jaguars, will squeeze themselves into any cardboard box that they can find. I imagine that when Skittles is dreaming, he visualizes himself to be a huge lion hunting with his pride!
Lions used to be wide ranging and plentiful in Africa, Asia, and India. Now, they are endangered, with possibly only 400 left in “the wild”. August 10 is set aside as International Lion Day.
This painting was painted with acrylic on coarse canvas, hand-stretched on 30″ x 30″ bars. I primed it, then painted it bright yellow. The only obviously yellow on the painting is on the inscription and the edges, however tiny specks show through, due to the roughness of the canvas, giving it a “sub-conscious” brightness or happiness.
This is a painting of what they call “Yellow Poppies”. I guess it is because some of them are yellow and their centers are yellow, not black. The petals range from orangey red to pale yellow. I painted it on five canvasses: four 10″ x 20″ arranged in leftward pinwheel around a 6″ square. They are to be hung with 2″ spaces between them, which makes this piece 32″ x 32″ overall.
Price: $100 plus postage
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It is cliche’ to say that John Prine (October 10, 1946 – April 7, 2020) was an “American treasure”. I regard him as a treasure to humanity. He would reject all of these special accolades and just say he was trying to do his best to be human. That’s what made him so wonderful. We have lost him, along with a myriad of other, wonderful and talented people, to COVID-19, so far, in 2020. His last song was “I Remember Everything.” It was recorded from quarantine.
John Prine was a champion for social justice, equality, and tolerance. He managed to do this with a sense of humour; never letting any bitterness or resentment show. He survived throat cancer and had to learn how to sing (an octave lower) all over again, and kept on going!
When I heard the song above on WXPN, the other morning, I sat in the driveway and wept for the loss we had experienced as a people, a nation, and a world. Rest in power, John Prine!
The painting is black and white acrylic on 24′ X 24′” gallery wrapped canvas. The edges are painted red, so no framing is needed. I signed and dated it on the bottom edge, so as to not interfere with the portrait.
We have known Leticia since she was a little girl. Her family and our family went to Finland Mennonite Church when our girls were little, too, in the 1980s. Her parents, Jim & Judy, had two sons by birth, then took in numerous foster children, several of which they adopted. Some of them were born addicted. Others had mental or physical disabilities. Judy struggled with bipolar disorder. I am sure it was not an easy household to grow up in.
Leticia is married and they have fully grown children of their own. She has asked me on two occasions if I would paint her portrait. She is so pleased with it that it will be joining her personal collection this week.
This painting is acrylic on 14″ x 14″ stretched canvas. The edges are painted blue, so framing is optional.
Price: $100 plus postage. Proceeds will service our sewing machines which need it after making thousands of face masks to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Many people consider wild violets to be a weed. We enjoy them and plant them! They are wonderful, native perennials that provide sustenance from early spring through fall to bees, rabbits, and other insects and small animals that are essential to a healthy ecosystem. Plus, they add delightful spots of color and bits of softness to a lawn. These tiny blossoms are scattered all across the back yard of the house in Perkasie where we rent an apartment. Each bloom is less than an inch across, so this painting is an enlarged view.
This painting is acrylic on 14″ x 14″ stretched canvas. The edges are painted purple, so framing is optional.
For Valentine’s Day, this year, I painted on 6″ x 6″ stretched canvasses for each of our five grandchildren. It was not planned this way, but as it turned out, they all have purple or lavender in them. They say purple is the most provocative of colors. I think it is fun. These paintings have been well received on Facebook. Here goes!
Asters, etc.
“Asters, etc.” is for Brigitta, age 9. She loves green and is a very good, abstract artist in her own right (better than me). In art, anyway, I find it hard to break free from physical reality. This is a freestyle interpretation of asters, with a couple of undefined, red weed flowers blooming, above the jumble of mixed foliage below.
Goldfinch with pulple coneflowers
“Goldfinch” is for Elijah, age 9. He loves it! It is based on a photograph I had taken through the front door window of our house on Front Street. It was the same goldfinch who had serenaded me at arm’s length while I paused on my morning walk just after my open heart surgery.
Lavender Sunflower
My painting for Isabella is of a sunflower, but with lavender petals. When she saw it, she said, “Poppop, you are a genius!” I surmise she likes it.
Bizaro Skittles
Jacob’s 11th birthday is next week. He wants a cat. His dad does not want any more animals in addition to his three sons in the house. So I painted him “Bizaro Skittles.” It is a portrait of my cat, mirrored, in purple and pale green.
yes!
“yes!” is for our 12-year-old grandson Aidan. I wrote around the sides: “Even when the answer is No, it says YES! I love you. 2 Corinthians 1:19”
It came to me that he is of the age and temperament that he needs to hear this. When his parents or other adults tell him no, it is not because they don’t want him to have fun, it is because they love him and want him to have a long and happy life. I explained this to him when I gave him the painting. He gave me a huge, tight, long hug-of-war hug.
This was painted on a lark one early morning before psychotherapy. I had a well aged plantain, just the right shade of blue paint and a 14″x11″ canvas. It is painted in the smile position. It is named “Sildenafil”.
Warning: “Objects in Art Appear Larger Than They Are”
This piece was a long time in the making. The core of it has sat as a text on what is my now defunct cellphone since December 17, 2015. It is crude and ridiculous. Diamond sent it to me after we had helped her and her man for over a year in various ways. Among other things, it includes the first and second and only times I have been called a bitch. When I read it, I broke into uproarious laughter. I determined then and there that I had to somehow immortalize this. This was by far the most creative “thank you” I had ever received for helping someone in 30 years of serving among the poor! I showed Tony. He couldn’t believe it. Earlier that evening, we had delivered their belongings back to them that they had stored in our barn since August. Some people just have a hard time saying thank you.
On August 14 Diamond and Rashawn had dropped off five huge garbage bags of their belongings at our barn for safe-keeping and tried to pull a fast one by just assuming they could arrive at our house with their stuff, and move in. They had not asked. They did not even ask for the ride. They just slipped into the back seat of John’s car. John just assumed they must have worked something out with me. They sat silently all the way home from Phila. to our home in Souderton, figuring I wouldn’t have the nerve to turn them away. I was home, because I was ill. When I heard them in the backyard, I lost it.
Tony had never seen me or heard me in such a rage before. I just could not understand the sheer gall at the level of presumption and deception that it took to try to do that. It was not like we didn’t have history. At Memorial Day, she had tried to guilt me into paying for a month’s rent, even though the weather was OK, and we had no money. When I did not pay it, she accused me of driving drunk, (She had seen me have 3 beers all day, several hours before we left to bring them home.) One used to be able to read about our appeal and the story on The King’s Jubilee’s site, before TKJ went out of business.
Over the last two years, as I have had open heart surgery for my aortic valve replacement; and as our house was foreclosed on and auctioned by the sheriff; as I went through three infections in my chest incision and ended up allergic to a ninth antibiotic; almost all of the old supporters and volunteers were silent, invisible, evaporated. with a few notable exceptions. Then I would refer to this glorious text message and have a good laugh. Diamond had really put her heart into it!
When our team was serving food in the park, Tony saw them. They were too embarrassed to come over for food. He called me. I told him to take food to them. He did, and gave them my love.
On the left side of the painting I wrote, “At least she said something. Read Revelations 3:16-18. It’s more than I can say for most of the church people in my life.”
Revelation 3:16-18 So, because you are lukewarm-neither hot nor cold-I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.
So the painting was done in layers. It is the logo of The King’s Jubilee in subdued tones on a 24″ square canvas. Painted over that is the QR Code for the text that Diamond sent me on December 17, 2015. That way, anyone with a smart phone with a QR Code app can read it, but it is not visible to casual observers or children. I thought this was a much better solution than counted cross-stitch. I discussed it with my therapist today. She and I had a good laugh. I said, “When I post this, the shit is probably going to hit the fan.” She said, “So what! That is what good art is supposed to do. It provokes a response.”
I asked her if she didn’t think I was totally off my nut for preserving this text in this way and doing this. She told me, no, quite the contrary. I had taken this ridiculous attack, seen it for what it was, and now turned it into something beautiful.
You’re Welcome.
Painting is 24″ x 24″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
SOLD
The irony here is the first time I shared it at a public showing, the first one to hit it with a QR code reader on a phone was a 9-year-old girl. I heard, “Look at this, daddy.” And I thought, “O shit.” I explained to him. We had a good chuckle. Our next door neighbor, who was visiting the show, stopped by, enjoyed the story, liked the painting, and bought it.
I finally finished this painting. I have been working on it for three weeks. It started when I saw a photograph of Freudenberg, Germany. All of these half-timber houses that were all black and white with the same basic pattern of timbers and windows and roof lines. Don’t get me wrong; the residents must be happy and content. I thought it would be nice to Americanize it to propose it for a hillside development, say, in central PA, as opposed to all of these boring boxes that waste arable farmland. This is the result.
“Freudenberg” means “joyful or happy mountain”.
Painting is acrylic on 15-7/8″ on 20″ stretched canvas Price: $395 plus postage
The 18th image of hope in the Fun-A-Day series represents a liberal education. Liberal does not represent a political position. It is the classical meaning of liberating, as in “liberal arts”. As a society, we have trashed these and turned universities into trade schools and turned students into cogs and “human capital”, i.e., wage slaves, in the capitalist system. Corporations fund research in universities to no benefit of students. Students still end up in debt for life, with no recourse, even through bankruptcy. Today, students graduate from Ivy League schools without being able to construct or even properly read a complex English sentence. They pay their money. They get their job tickets. Trump graduated from University of Pennsylvania.
A liberal education doesn’t so much teach someone what to think or give them facts, but teaches them how to think; what questions to ask; how to research to find facts and truth.
Yet there are talented and intelligent people who are not given opportunities because they could not afford to go to college. Appropriate higher education should be available and free to everyone who qualifies for it, if we truly believe in equality, and want to advance as a people, and want to solve humanity’s problems. Degrees should not be job tickets, nor is education limited to institutions. Lincoln never graduated college. He read the law. Pres. Carter was home schooled. He is a nuclear physicist.
The bookshelf is not full. That indicates that those who read, study and learn, will have their own books to write, to add to the “great conversation”, as Mortimer Adler called it. This is our hope for our children and our grandchildren. It has been stifled by the tuition financing system and the wicked bankers and their fascist partners in Congress, in both falsely so-called major parties. They need to go if hope is to survive.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1.75″ stretched canvas.
While we are experiencing sub-zero wind chills, it seems only natural to hope for an early Spring. Crocuses, whether purple, lavender, white or yellow, don’t care whether the snow has gone or not. If the days are long enough, the calendar is right, they are popping up and blooming.
Painting is acrylic on 10″ x 10″ stretched canvas.
The third painting in my Fun-A-Day 31 images of hope series is a sunrise. The psalmist says, “His mercies are new every morning.” This expresses the hope that with each new day comes a new opportunity to get things right, or at least a bit better than the day before.
Painting is acrylic on 20″ x 16″ stretched canvas.
This is the second in my series of paintings portraying aspects of hope. This is a pine seedling that has emerged from a crack in a rock. I find this hopeful and encouraging. It demonstrates the persistence of life in the world. There are actually some pine cones of certain species of pine that will not open to release their spores unless and until they are exposed to the extreme heat of a forest fire. The seeds or spore are so tiny and resilient that they can find purchase in the tiniest cracks. After a flood has washed away all topsoil down to the bedrock, these trees can seed themselves and start to break up the rock and drop needles and provide habitat for birds and other animals, etc.
Imagine riding Snoopy while he dreams of being the Red Baron while riding Charlie Brown’s mailbox. My sister went to college with Charlie Brown. Well, he looked and acted a lot like Charlie. His name was Mark, though. He was Charles Schulz’s son.
This is my 23rd carousel animal in my Perkasie Fun-A-Day 2018 ‘Prequel’.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1-1/2″ stretched canvas.
This painting actually has four carousel animals on it. There are three seals. Notice the babies’ faces peeking out under the saddle. There is an ostrich coming up behind (or to the left), as well. I decided not to include the mostly obscured tiger , elephant and pony in the painting. This is the smallest diameter carousel I have seen, I painted it using only burnt umber and titanium white. This style is called monochromatic.
Apparently this carousel is permanently under construction. It has a sawhorse where an animal likeness usually is. Perhaps someone didn’t pay their pledge to the zoo.
This is my 18th carousel animal in my Fun-A-Day ‘Prequel’.
Painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ x 1-1/2″ stretched canvas.
These carousel frogs are reproductions of 19th century zoo carousel animals. I painted them for my 6th and 7th carousel animals for my Fun-A-Day ‘prequel’ project.
Painting is acrylic on 11″ x 14″ stretched canvas.
Aardvaark’s have always been my favorite exotic animal. For my second carousel animal for my Fun-A-Day prequel, I painted this little, saddled aardvaark. It was the first time I used glitter on a painting.
This is a painting of a Chickadee clinging to a hanging pine branch on a tree in front of our house. Last year and through the winter, Blue Jays dominated the huge, sprawling pine. This Spring, the Chickadees drove them out! They are now sharing the far pine at the right, front corner of the lot with a small flock of intrepid Mourning Doves.
The painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ stretched canvas.
I may have mentioned before, that I grew up in Minnesota. In my day, there was a strong and booming middle class, thanks to an aggressive, progressive income tax structure on both the federal and state levels. On weekends, holidays and vacations (Working people actually took vacations back then), it seemed just about anybody and everybody went “to the lake”. That is what we all said. Our cars’ license plates advertised “10,000 Lakes”. The Almanac counted 12,512 lakes plus a few thousand ponds. One did not have to leave “the Cities”, short for “the Twin Cities”, Minneapolis and St. Paul, to go to a lake. Mpls. is a mash-up of Sioux and Greek meaning “City of Lakes” and has 25 lakes within the city limits, including one manmade one, since they just needed to round up, I guess.
When I was in junior high, my folks bought a lake place just across the river in Wisconsin. I learned the cheeseheads called Minnesotans “swampies”. But this article was supposed to be about my painting of a Great Blue Heron. I grew up seeing these beautiful, fishing birds on the edges of lakes and swooping down and diving into them all of my young life, growing up in Minnesota and Wisconsin. I have seen them occasionally, if only fleetingly, in PA.
Painting is acrylic on 10″ x 10″ stretched canvas.
I painted Rupert for our son-in-law Vincent’s 30 somethingth birthday this month. Sadly, as it turns out, Rupert is slowly dying. He has been a wonderful cat, friendly and affectionate. He has lived longer than we expected, what with his taste for toxic chemicals and his talent for escaping outdoors. Even though he hasn’t eaten for days, the sweetheart still roused himself to stand up to greet me when I visited yesterday.
The painting is acrylic on 10″ x 10″ stretched canvas.
I have been searching for ways to use my art to positively respond to the current horror that we face in American governmental breakdown. Each day, there is a new attack; a new round of newspeak. One day it is a congresswoman proudly proclaiming that her vote giving permission to internet service providers to sell all of our browsing histories to whomever wants to buy them “protects your privacy.” The next day, Sean Spicer is giving a grimacing Park Service employee a huge, game-show, donation check for $78,000 (supposedly Trump’s 3 months’ net salary), two days after Trump’s budget cut the Park Service budget by over $1.5 billion. Fact checkers have determined that 69.1% of Trump’s statements are false. One White House reporter said in frustration, “It is hard to know what to think when you can’t tell what Trump means when he uses words.”
Yesterday, I started to paint this portrait of my cat, with a Che Guevara beret. Skittles helps keep me sane. He climbs up onto my left side and cuddles. If things get too intense, he lies on my keyboard. We have matching heart murmurs. He will get in my face and command me to “CUDDLE!” It struck me that this is what America and much of the world needs right now. I can see it now, massive cuddle-ins in front of defense contractors and fracking stations; cuddlers blocking access to United Airlines offices; cuddlers circling the Pentagon; cuddlers on the mall in DC asking for an end to military expansion and for universal healthcare.
“Make Love, not Human Services Cuts!”
HUG O’ WAR
I will not play at tug o’ war.
I’d rather play at hug o’ war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles.
And everyone wins.
– Shel Silverstein
Painting is 16″ x 20″ acrylic on stretched canvas.
Fezzik is a little cat ironically named after the character played by André the Giant in The Princess Bride. I painted it for a present for our grandson Jacob’s 13th birthday. The cat was a stray that adopted his family and now lives indoors.
I grew up in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, Minnesota. It actually has more like 12,512 lakes and 90,000 miles of shoreline. That’s more shoreline than California, Florida and Hawaii combined! So I did some fishing as a child. We caught Northerns, Walleyes, Bass and Perch, but the most fun and the best eating were the simple Sunfish! If you found a good spot, you could just pull them in one after another! They weren’t that big, but they always put up a good fight. We knew a bay on Lake Lizzy near Detroit Lakes, MN, where we regularly caught 3/4 lb. to 1-1/2 lb. Pumpkinseed Sunnies. We would catch them by the cooler-full. Then we would scale them and fillet them. Then we would batter and fry them up; invite the whole clan and a few strays over. We’d fry up ‘chips’ (potato wedges); make tossed and 3 bean salads; and have plenty of beer and other libation on hand. We would have a Minnesota fish fry, where the fish is finger-lickin’ good! One time I was cleaning a cooler full of Sunnies on our back patio and our mailman came around back for a signature for something. He saw how I was filleting the fish. He got down on his knees and showed me a better method that would get more meat out of the fish.
My dad always intentionally mispronounced this variety of Sunfish and called them “Punkinseeds” for fun.
Painting is acrylic on 12″x12″ canvas.
Price: $100
This painting commemorates the day last June, shortly after my open heart surgery to replace my damaged aortic valve with a pig valve. I had just exited our house and was passing the front “garden”, a jumble of native plants and weeds. I was moving slowly. A male goldfinch landed on one of the many Echinacea that were in bloom. He was within arm’s length of me. He tilted his head and looked at me; then he began to sing. He went through all of his repertoire, then it seemed as if he turned to me again for a response. I said, “Thank you, Mr. Goldfinch!” He nodded and flew off, It was a magical moment, like something from one of those classic Disney movies.
The painting is acrylic on 6″ x 6″ stretched canvas.
These globular blossoms are about 1″ in diameter with tiny tendrils poking out on all sides. The bushes are native to Pennsylvania. They were here before white men arrived. This is a painting of a blossom on a buttonwood bush in front of our house. That is why the red siding color is in the background. This is acrylic on a 16″ diameter canvas. The edge is painted bright yellow to facilitate frame-less hanging.
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 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.
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.
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.
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”.
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?”
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.”
Many claim that his path of non-violent civil disobedience ultimately failed to liberate India, since they resorted to violent revolution. The truth of the matter, however, is that it is unlikely they would have had the cohesion and discipline to do that as a unified people had he not trained them in civil disobedience first. His teachings were instrumental in instructing MartinLuther King, Jr., Simone Weil, and Dietrich Bonhoffer, thus, he impacted US civil rights, and the French and German resistance.
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 16″ x 20″ stretched canvas.
Price: $200
This was a gift to my friend Ray Acker on the occasion of his ordination to the priesthood in the Antiochian Orthodox Church, as Fr. Herman. I wrote the words of Gandhi, above, on the back of the canvas frame:
“My uniform experience has informed me that there is no other God than Truth.”
Dimitri Papagiani was born with a mysterious, incurable birth defect; more like, multiple birth defects. He is crippled. He cannot speak, except in unintelligible grunts. His body and limbs are twisted and he is confined to a horizontal wheelchair. His mother has cared for him for all of his 54 years, with help from his sister.
If you have followed my work on this website, you know that I have had 43 acquaintances who have committed suicide including 19 people close to me, who include my sister and my baptismal godfather. I also know many others who have attempted suicide, but failed. When I saw Dimitri at St. Andrew Orthodox Church, Lewes, Delaware, last Sunday, I was so moved. With so much stacked against him, he still decides to wake up every morning and face the day.
Painting is acrylic on 20″ x 16″ on stretched canvas
Price: $195 plus postage
I decided to paint this moment in my sister Sue Ann’s life in the same style I originally captured it on film with my Instamatic camera just over 45 years ago. The painting is square, slightly out of focus, with a yellowed border as if it sat in a drawer all those years like the actual snapshot.
Sue Ann was copy editor for our high school yearbook, the Robin, for 1971, her senior year. I was the only sophomore on the annual staff. That was a violation of longstanding tradition. They were shorthanded for the Academics Section due to illness. I had submitted a number of poems for the book that demonstrated my talent. I started writing secretly, submitting articles through Sue Ann. A couple of months in, I was publicly accepted, when we had to start doing all-nighters to meet deadlines. Sue Ann was a tough editor. Articles had to be brief, yet packed with stories that would be understandable decades later. She and Janice Eisenhart, editor-in-chief, and Helen Olsen, our adviser, wanted a book that was to be a true time capsule; a reference students and others would be able to read years and decades later and get an accurate picture of the year at RHS. We all worked extremely hard to make that happen. This was before personal computers or word processors. We had to manually print on the layout grids each character of text, accounting for exact pica widths and justification. Then we would ship sections of the book off to the publisher at a time and wait to see how it looked. This painting is of my sister taking her first look at the finished book, the night before it was to be distributed at RHS.
The book won national awards. It received mixed reviews at school. That was OK. We expected that. It was not the usual, school spirit, jock centered, kitschy review of the year. There are no inside jokes or private messages. Forty-five years later, it reads well, and its style does not seem dated. This was a proud moment for Sue Ann, and no small accomplishment.
Sue Ann went on to Concordia College, Moorehead, MN, for a year, then continued at Augsburg in Minneapolis. She had taught me to write, and to be a ruthless self-editor. While at Augsburg, she lived at home. I ended up typing her English Lit. papers, in the wee hours of the morning. I became her editor. Her English prof. was my British Lit. teacher’s husband. They compared notes. One day, Mrs. Wood asked me if Sue Ann helped me with my papers. I told her No, but that I edited hers. However, Sue Ann had taught me how to write, so our styles were indistinguishable. She shared this with Prof. Wood, and reported back that they had a good chuckle over their Chardonnay.
This is in my suicide series of paintings. Sue Ann had started drinking regularly, as well as using various recreational drugs, while at Concordia. Both of our parents and three of our grandparents were alcoholic. Sue Ann got married, had three kids, was a paralegal, then an accountant. She decided to try to do an intervention on our dad to get him treatment for his alcoholism. That’s when she confronted her own. She went into treatment. She and her husband joined AA. She was after everyone to join AA. At some point, in her 40s, she became addicted to gambling. She ended up squandering the family’s resources, and had just separated from her husband and moved into an apartment on her own when she took her own life with a drug cocktail. She was about to be confronted by her boss for embezzling money from his companies. It was November 29, 2000. She was 47.
She had been a great mom. The great irony here is that she and I were the main, informal suicide hotline counselors when we were in junior and senior high.
I met Robert when he was an inmate in the Philadelphia House of Correction and I was Mennonite Chaplain. He was then transferred to the Phila. Industrial Correctional Center when it opened in 1986. He attended my Bible studies there. He asked me to bring some groceries, a Bible and a few other items to Joyce where she was living, Richard Allen Homes.
When the other inmates heard I was going there, they urged me not to go. They assured me it was far too dangerous for one such as me.
I went. I was shocked to find such deplorable conditions. Joyce was living on the couch in a tiny, bug & vermin infested apartment with an older woman who was dying of leukemia. Joyce was there illegally, but she exchanged care for the woman in lieu of rent of couch space. There was a waiting list to get into RAH. The entry hall had been firebombed and never cleaned up.
I dropped off the groceries. We had a short visit. As I was leaving, I saw that several cars in the parking lot had their windows smashed. Another car with its windows smashed out pulled in just then. The next thing I see is a group of tough guys sizing me up. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt; nothing to indicate that I was a minister of any kind. This was the kind of trouble the men at PICC had been worried about. Then, all at once, they all focused just above my head. Then I heard one of them mutter to the others, “Don’t mess with him. He’s a missionary man.” The tallest of them then said, “Have a nice day.” I replied with the same and proceeded to my car, hoping to find it with windows intact. They were.
After Robert got out of jail, we had Joyce and him to our house for dinner. There were more grocery runs. Then word came that Joyce had died from AIDS and then word from the street a month later that Robert passed, as well. We knew them less than a year, but they left a mark on our hearts.
They were the first people we knew to die of AIDS. This was several years before World AIDS Day in 1991 and the red ribbon AIDS awareness campaign. I put a little anachronous AIDS ribbon earring in Joyce’s ear in the painting. Once again, these are not accurate likenesses, since we have no photographs, and it has been nearly 30 years. They are likenesses painted out of loving memory.
The painting is acrylic on 11″x14″ canvas with painted edges.
We only knew Nancy for the last two years of her life. and she passed away almost 23 years ago now, on September 4, 1993, but she was a force of nature. I will be the first to admit that this painting is a poor likeness to photographs of Nancy. She looks healthier here than ever I saw her, with brighter eyes. This is more the way I remember her in my mind’s eye rather than what the camera saved. She had been so beat up by circumstances, by poverty, by drugs, and quite literally by people in her life, that the camera wasn’t always kind. But in real life, that is not who we knew or what we saw.
She had been married and had two sons. They divorced. She got involved in a lesbian relationship. Her lover ended up abusing her to the point of fracturing her skull, which gave her problems the rest of her life. I don’t know what else they got involved in. Her lover abused the children, as well. I do know, she knew the seamier side of Pottstown very well. Nancy joined us serving the homeless in center city Philadelphia. After several weeks, she implored me to start a similar ministry in Pottstown, where she had lived most of her life. I said I would be happy to, if there was a need and we could raise the resources and manpower to do so. I told her it might not look exactly like what we did in Phila. She and I spent two weeks, day and night, interviewing all the social service agencies and churches; talking to hookers, addicts, homeless, business owners, teenagers hanging out, cops, to find out what was and what was not happening to serve the poor in the city; and what else should be happening.
We found that the only day of the week when no food was served was Wednesday. There were three populations in two neighborhoods that needed food help: children, homeless adults, and homeless teens in central Pottstown and Stowe. I was actually doing more of the interviewing of the church people. Nancy was busy raising up a team and a van, etc., because it was the same night we served in Philadelphia, we had to double our team to make it happen. We determined to go forward as long as Nancy was willing to lead the Pottstown team. She humbly accepted. She was the best person for the job. She could not drive. She lived on SSI and Food Stamps in public housing. She knew the lay of the land and she had a heart for the people.
Within a month of her asking, we were able to start serving on two sites. She added a drop off spot for boxed meals for homeless teens who wanted to stay faceless, later that year. Nancy would call me on Thursday morning all nervous that she was out of peanut butter. I would ask her what day it was. She would tell me it was Thursday. I would remind her that she didn’t need to make PB&Js for another 6 days, so not to worry. She gradually learned to wait longer before she would call me, if she was out of something, until she learned to trust that things would be supplied when they were needed by the community of faith. Then one Thursday morning, I received a call from Nancy. She told me how she had used the last of her peanut butter for the sandwiches for the children the night before. She was worried about it, so she asked the team to pray for more peanut butter, before they went out to serve. When she got home to her apartment, she could not enter until she cleared the 3′ x 4′ front step of all the containers of peanut butter that had been left there for her! She said, “Oh me of little faith!” We have no idea where it all came from. We just refer to that as “The Minor Peanut Butter Miracle.”
About a week after Nancy and the team celebrated completing a year of service, Nancy Karpinski died of an apparent heart attack on Sept. 4, 1993. She was just 50 years old. Her legacy lives on. Her right hand man for that year, Kork Moyer, now leads an outreach and shelter ministry in Pottstown. I don’t think that would have happened were it not for the importunity of this unlikely organizer.
It is good to see her smiling face and kind eyes again.
Painting is 11″x14″ acrylic on stretched canvas, with painted sides so no expensive framing is required.
“Other People’s Children” is a totally different approach to pro-life. It looks at adults whom the world has thrown away and sees the absolute beauty and value the world missed. The term “pro-life” has been hijacked by the anti-abortion mob, who are anything but. I celebrate my friends, true loved ones, whom the so-called “pro-life” crowd cast aside as ‘takers’ because of their disabilities, gender, color or economic standing. I am painting their portraits to go along with their stories. Some are from my weak memory. I have very few photos.
I tried to capture the essence of Rosalie, a woman I met in the Women’s Detention Facility in 1985. We became lifelong friends. She was irrepressible. She attached herself to me immediately. We were both about 30, just a month apart in age, worlds apart in backgrounds. She died of leukemia on the street in 2008, when we were about 53. This is just a poor cartoon representing her. It really looks nothing like her aside from the freckles, frizzy red hair and big smile, but does capture some of the emotional impact of her coming toward me for the first time in the House of Corrections, more than 30 years ago now.
I miss her.
The painting is 16″x12″ acrylic on canvas. It stands quite well on its own: a provocative conversation starter.
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