They Were Happy Times

This was done way back in 2003. You can tell by the faded images and the creases in the paper that it's old. It's supposed to be a family portrait. Kathy and Sarah have changed a bit over the intervening years, naturally. I, unnaturally, have not aged one second. Sometimes it pays to be friends with Dorian Gray.

The Player

I confess I never heard of Pierino da Vinci until I read his biography in Vasari's Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects. Just in case your memory is a little faulty at present or if, like me, you hadn't heard of him, he was the nephew of  Leonardo da Vinci. Per Vasari, Pierino seemed destined to follow in his uncle's footsteps, being blessed with "a most beautiful countenance," "great grace in every movement," and "a quickness of intelligence that was marvelous." He was also a wonderful sculptor whose genius, again according to Vasari, was "admired by all." So, with all those attributes, why isn't he as famous as his uncle? The answer is death. He died "not having yet reached the age of twenty-three." Fortunately for art-lovers, even though he did not reach his maturity, he was industrious and so left behind some completed works.

And now I'm going to use poor Pierino as an excuse to start preaching the obvious. We are all allotted only a few breaths in this life, but we do not know the number. Whether it be a 16th century plague or a 21st century one, whether by accident or nature or whatever, death falls upon us all. Let's hope we don't waste the brief opportunity and squander our limited time, be it as short as Pierino's or as long as Picasso's. We may not be able to produce works like Leonardo or Pierino, but we can create something unique that will make the world a bit more beautiful, or at least a bit more interesting. And that ranting memento mori, trite and obvious as it is, is all I have to say. 

For Bluebell

Bluebell was my daughter Sarah's cat from the summer of 2003 until today. This drawing is not a very good likeness of the cat... such as, for one thing, she had longer ears. And I also couldn't get the scanner to reproduce the colors too well (Bluebell was gray, not blue). I drew this in 2015 to accompany a book Sarah self-published titled Mystic Dreaming: A Book of Poetry. If you're interested, you can find a copy at Amazon.com. I think Sarah is a gifted poet, but then, I am extremely biased.  Anyway, this is the poem Sarah wrote about Bluebell way back in 2015:

Bluebell

(For my she-cat)

She is gray as storm clouds,

Striped with darker fur.

Her eyes are sage green.

Her fur is soft and thick.

She walks on silent paws.

Her ears are pricked high.

Her nose is darker gray.

Her purr brings calm and peace.

After a long, contented and, until just a few day ago, a healthy life, Bluebell quietly passed away today. Rest in peace, old friend. You were always quite the charming character.

Rumpelstiltskin

Here's another old painting, done in 2005. Along with the skeletons and sad-eyed, emaciated ghosts whispering their mournful laments, it's surprising what all else one may stumble upon when cleaning an attic. There's not a great deal I can say about this piece. Obviously, this painting was done just for the fun of it.

Spring Heeled Jack comic book

The "Comics Classics" line has just released the third issue of "Spring Heeled Jack," an amateur comic book I did more years back than I care to remember. In fact, it was done so long ago that I don't have much to say about it, the way that an adult wouldn't have much to say about a story he wrote when he was a child or teenager. Still, though, I have no reservation in bragging about Jason Gilmore's coloring of the cover, Juliet Fromholt's print formatting and Matthew Brassfield's editing, along with his courage, if not his wisdom, in wanting to publish this. To see all the titles published by the company, you can visit their website at www.bloodscreamcomics.com.

In The Grasslands

An old piece recently disinterred. It was done in 2008. The colors in the painting are less pronounced and bright than in this reproduction (photography is not my forte). In fact, aside from the white feather and some of the reds, the colors are drab, even sullen, and, apart from the yellow, without highlights. The somber colors remind me of how the light often looks before a storm. Maybe that's what I was trying to capture... that is, if I was trying to capture anything at all. After all these years, your guess is as good as mine. So I'll just assume I wasn't trying to capture any effect of light and that this was simply something fun to paint and let it go at that.

A Winter Heart

I'm just showing this one because Kathy liked it enough to frame it. It was done in 2003. I'm appallingly ignorant about Oriental culture and history. Kathy, however, lived in Japan for some time and fell in love with the country, so I did this picture for her. In my complete ignorance, this is merely how I imagined a woman from some vague past might have looked.