"The Letter"

    This is actually a room in my house with the morning sun pouring in through an unseen window.  The woman who owned my house previously had a love of floral wallpaper and so papered every room a different flower.   I had no specific story in mind when beginning this piece.  I hired a male model to walk through the house and pose in different light situations and in different clothing as I followed, looked, and took his  photo - the light raking across his face in this position stopped me and became the spark for this piece.
    The ceramic skull atop the desk is something I use as a still life object in drawings and paintings, just a prop, but it causes many people to ask if the male model is a doctor.  I found the poster of a Raphael painting in a stack at the university where I worked and thought it would be perfect because the Virgin looks to our left and so directs the viewer towards the unseen window.  The skull and my corgi dog do the same.  Yes, that is my loving corgi whom I made pose - I set his forelegs and front body up on some blankets (because he kept lying down) and worked on  him from life, not from photos.  I in fact worked up the whole painting from life - from the actual living scene and not from a dead photo - except for the people, who pose perhaps three times each because nobody seems to be patient enough to stay still that long.
    I had seen a beautiful Richard Maury painting earlier that year which made my heart flutter.  It included a baby doll. The doll looked helpless, well loved and spoke of an unseen child, so I went to the thrift store and found my own baby doll to include.  The kitty switch-plate cover connects visually to my dog and so creates another diagonal eye movement. The painting was almost complete when I realized I needed a large dark shape on the right.  Enter my friend Amelia to pose.  The painting had evolved from one of a lone figure to a couple, suddenly there was sexual tension.  But now I couldn't get the front of the piece of paper Amelia was reading to appear as if it came forward toward the viewer.  The ribbon at the end of the paper solved that problem and pried the front of the letter out away from her dark outfit.
    So you see the story evolved as the painting evolved.  Many of the elements are included for formal reasons, such as to direct your eye to a particular part of the painting, or to darken an area that needs darkening. The stories of the characters develop fairly unconsciously. What I really enjoy is when people view the finished piece and they all tell me elaborate stories about the truth of what the painting reveals  - and all their stories are different.  The piece seems to arouse different feelings in everybody that views it, its history dependent on your history. The painting lives and evolves even after it is finished.

"An Unpleasant Drop"

    This painting was commissioned by a broker from Morgan Stanley.  He described for me his, nay his whole office's,  absolute panic when the stock market bubble began to burst.   He told of sweaty, sleepness nights. He said the money in the portfolios he handled lost about half of its worth in a few years.  People's life savings were draining away and no one knew if or when the stopper would arrive.  He wanted a painting to commemorate that awful feeling. He already owned a piece of my work, I reminded him there wasn't a lot of dramatic movement in them and that I depict everything in a very realistic manner.  He said, "Go."
    I started thinking and making sketches, started to think about some sort of bull or bear image.  I  then went to tiendas all over Atlanta looking for a bull pinata but came up with instead a ceramic bull piggy bank.  I then went to a real bank and bought rolls of coins to fill my new prop.  I proceeded to drop it on the floor while trying to be a bit careful so the general shape of the bull would be retained.  "Blam!"   Money went everywhere!  I scooped it back towards the ceramic shards. I then found the devilish stuffed bear and thought it perfect -  as in fairy stories where the toys come to life at night  I could imagine the naughty bear had nudged the bull right off the edge of the dresser.   This painting has a more aerial viewpoint to make the viewer feel a little vertiginous, off balance, like the dropped bull.  Reflected in the mirror so they can hardly be seen are an abandoned bottle of whiskey and a handgun over by the back baseboard.  A little black humor...  that should surely imply desperation.
    I finished the piece and sent a photo of it off the the owner.  He liked it.  But he asked, "Who were those people in the photo on the dresser?"  "That's my friend and me.  But it could become anyone."  He became very interested then and sent me a photo of his wife and himself which I replaced right in the frame.  Then it was done.

"The Birthday Wish"

    This painting was commissioned by a couple that saw my work in the Atlanta Journal Constitution in an exhibit advertisement.   The gentleman called me and used words about my work like emotionally subtle,  profound and mysterious.  I was thinking, "This guy might be a nut."  He asked about pricing and he ended the conversation by saying,  "We don't have that kind of money right now."  Yup I thought, a nut.
    And then about six months later he called back!  He said they now did have the money and we should begin right away!  I drove over to their home with a slide show and to chitchat and get a feel of their tastes.   I couldn't have been more wrong in my first impression,  not nuts at all but a lovely, lovely couple.  I showed them slides of my work (now with this web-site they could just go on line) but I couldn't get a handle on what they wanted.  The wife seemed to really like my landscapes, the husband has a taste for Surrealism.  So I began doing tiny paintings of the skyline of Atlanta as preliminaries to run up the flagpole.  When I brought those back over the husband dismissed them with extreme prejudice, he didn't want a landscape.  I realized that although she liked landscapes it was his project, I understood the dynamic.
    I then mentioned to him that the buildings at night in Atlanta remind me of candles, or of pointy birthday hats and I saw a glimmer of interest.   I think the birthday image surfaced in my fluid imagination because they seemed to love each other an inordinate amount for a couple with five grown children - I envisioned their arms encircling a cake and the grasping of their hands forming a conduit of loving energy around the dessert.  The cake and the candles represent all  hopes and dreams for the upcoming year and I planned to have one of them taking a big breath to blow out the candles and make a wish.  Now the husband was with me.
    The only change he made was that the candles were not being blown out quite yet, he thought he looked too goofy.  I left in the skyline of Atlanta at night for her, and for me.