Navy League Sunday

From Eyes to Aye-Ayes, and Sea to shining Sea...

Music by which to gaze at sepia-colored pictures:
Anchors Aweigh
God Bless America/KateSmith
In the Mood

Black Queen Takes White...Knight Approaches, Curious.

I know I am best known for my erotic artworks. And it's been a long while since I have done anything erotic. People have been complaining.

So here is a brand new erotic painting, finished today. I used some of my casting experiments. I took a mold of a hundred-year-old bronze I picked up in Paris of a pair of women making love. It was a very deep mold and when flattening out the relatively thin casting to collage onto the painting it became wonderfully distorted, like one of those azimuthal equidistant maps of the world. I mounted it onto a background of chess squares and added some of the female torsos as other chess pieces, one or two already taken. No Pawn intended.

The Black Tower with the female torso enclosed within made me think of the passage in Song of Solomon: We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?
If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar.
I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favour.

There are lots of Towers in the Song of Songs and they mean different things. In this case She is a Woman, hidden and mysterious.

Acrylic paint, silk and 22k gold leaf on paper. 10 x 13" (25 x 35 cm.)

It Don't Come Easy

The end of a hard workday today. Pour the Wine and heal the Artist. Eyes and hands can hurt.

Weathermen

"The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress."

-Hendrik Willem Van Loon, The Arts

Journey's End

This is, I believe, the last painting in the series for my woman friend (see below). In her dream she walks across a sandy plain to an ancient scroll. It is a vision, of course, so the scroll is just suggested against the mountainscape.

Acrylic paint on paper, 11 x 15" (27 x 38 cm.)

Contradictions? Very well, contradictions...

My new welcome mat.

Waterfall Woman

I finished this painting today. It is another in the series for the woman with the dream story (see below). She wanted a fantasy landscape in which she is dressed in costume reminiscent of the 14th century. We consulted with my book of period costume and I gathered that what she wanted was a bit more fantasy than strict reality. In any case, I think she looks quite beautiful (which she is, actually).

I include a detail of the face. As the painting is about 11 x 15 inches, this detail is less than two inches tall (5 cm.). I used my big, illuminated magnifying glass, which I keep bolted to my desk to do it. It's work like this that has driven me to reading glasses...

Acrylic paint on paper. 11 x 15 inches (27 x 38 cm.)

How Much?

Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'

-Henry Miller

Lady Luck

A companion piece to "Her Law". I did both paintings yesterday, finished this one this afternoon. Casual, one-day paintings using my perennially favorite motif: "Woman as Law Unto Herself, Force of Nature, Goddess, Creatress and Ruler of the Universe, Etc."

Works for me.

Acrylic paint, cotton and silk on paper. The fabric under the woman is printed with playing cards. I found several yards at a flea market.

Listen to the incomparable Sinatra! Luck Be A Lady

Her Law

It is written all over Her.

“The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature /were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.”

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Acrylic paint, silk and 22k gold leaf on paper.