Old Master Studies

 These are all pencil renderings taken from paintings of master painters, among them DaVinci, Botticelli, Velasquez and Vermeer.

Such good practice to learn from the all time greats!

Beatlings!

Beatles' Animal Songs (after 'Revolver')

Revolver vs. Pepper: Which album is better?

A Day in the Life in Beatlesville

I love the Beatles! Not only has their music entertained and uplifted me, but the unique persona of the band and its legacy has inspired me as a visual artist. In these three illustrations, dozens of songs are referenced; how many can you spot? Counting repeated references (the Yellow Submarine appears in all three) I count more than 40. Have fun exploring!

Trick Art

What do you see in these drawings? There could be 'more than meets the eyes'....

The Seven Deadly Sins

'Lockdown Series'

We are in a new era that seemed to jump out at us out of nowhere. Millions of people are in lockdown and everyone is dealing with the anxiety of not knowing what the near future will bring.

In response, many artists and performers are coming up with ways to connect to people during this challenging time. My  idea is to ask people that I connect with through social media to toss out random, zany ideas that I then incorporate as elements of drawings. Thus, each of the seven shown below (and I continue to keep this series going for a while) is a collaborative effort, combining at least five, and in one case six, ideas each of which was contributed individually. None of the ideas themselves came from me; I decided how to use them and in some cases, interpret them.

I think they have a kind of 'Stone Soup' (I have always loved that children's story) energy of having been created through group inspiration.

They're fun and crazy! Enjoy!

Corona Virus Poems

One Wish

If the Genie says

'you are not allowed to wish it away

that wish I cannot grant'

then I would say

'Then, this is my wish:

Let it pound us

and mash us

and butter us

into a slower

more meaningful

and more contemplative

way of life.

Let its

harmfulness

make us

less harmful to our world

Let it

Rehumanize us."

This Time

We need to do

THIS TIME

what we should have done

LAST TIME

and the time before that

and the time before that

and the time before that

and the time before that

and the time

and the time

and the time

and the time

and the time

before that

when we first noticed

what needed to be done

There were fewer of us then

and we could have simply said

'King, why do you hoard?

why do you paint your palace gold

instead of sharing?

Don't you know that people

YOUR people

need what you hoard

and would love and honor and respect you

and follow you to the gates of Hell

if you would but share it?

Don't you know that this very day

in YOUR kingdom

a father sold his eldest daughter to the slave traders

in order to feed his younglings?

Is the gold you slap on your columns

more important than that?

What kind of king are you,

who is less in spirit than the common beggar

who shares some of his scraps with a cat?'

We knew then

that the thing to do

was to send the king off

and all who stood by him

with five days' rations

and said

'Let's be done with kings, now and forever.

Without them, we have more than enough

and can look after each other

and see that none of us go without.

Surely, our children, and our descendants

a thousand years hence

will be grateful for what we have done today.'

Though the task has become greater and more complicated

by orders of magnitude

it is still the same task

and it still needs to be done

THIS TIME


Cleanse Thoroughly

It's not enough to wash our hands
we need to wash our minds as well
mine has a virus of jealousy
What's yours?

We need to wash our ears
I was deaf to another's pain
pain that I caused
time to clean
and hear better next time

We need to wash this world
we have dirtied it
smudged it with coarseness
cruelty and conceit
painted it brown with
uncaringness

Wash this world
wash this world
The virus
is in our way of life
which we have twisted into
a way of death
and through that corridor
it sauntered in