Clean Slate

A brand new client opens up new doors, new subject matter. New eyes get to see your art. A clean slate. A new continent. What will I write on it? What are the possibilities?

I did this for Kiplinger's, an old client of mine. Art directed by Cynthia Currie. I love doing art for business magazines because illustration evokes the creative dimension of money matters, the individuality of the issues. There's a thoughtfulness to the painted image that a photography seldom touches. (Much as I love photography.)

Still Life With Businessman

There is something wonderfully straightforward about still life. It asks the viewer to make sense of the adjacence of unrelated things. Because they are arranged like a place setting are they to eat? Should the head of a businessman be eaten with a salad fork or a garden trowel? What does Emily Post say? I used the same kind of principle to arrange the entries in A Book of Ages (Harmony,2008/Three Rivers Press,2010), without comment, without footnotes, hoping the reader would see the ironies that emerged. I may have been too subtle about it. (The book remains the perfect gift item for your hard-to-amuse brother-in-law and every bookish person on your list.)

Happy Father's Day

Shirt & Tie

So many neckties here in Chicago. Which reminded me of this sketchbook piece I did. I own neckties. I collect them. I actually have a few dozen club and regimental ties given me by a physician to the Royal Family. But I seldom wear them. I'd feel silly wearing a tie in my studio. I envy those important and powerful people who do get to dress that way, like my dad did when he worked in one of these big Chicago skyscrapers.