Remains

When you are no longer here

Your contours remain in the shadows

Compensating for raw nerves

Fresh abrasions have exposed

When the only pieces remaining

Are the cracked and broken parts

When the panels of glass shatter

I'll stop and gather up the shards

When my harried heart strings sever

Flying too close to the sun

I'll think about the fateful day

When all the tethers came undone

My swollen ankles are red and sore

From endless wading through the mud

The hallway mirror is smudged and stained

Streaked with calcifying blood

My nervous eyes squint and blink

To avoid the sting of trickling sweat

But I will never think about

The one thing that I can't forget

A dormant body wastes and withers

Gradually it bloats and decays

Until all that we can identify

Are the skeletal remains

Perusing through the scattered fragments

Of a life that used to be

Wondering just how all of this

Could be happening to me

Beyond the faint and faded pictures

Of well worn memories

Lie the questions challenging

Our once firmly held beliefs

When all that still woefully remains

Of yesterday's proliferating promise

Are the rotting, rusted gates

Of the blockade put there to stop us

That's when I can't help but grimace

Turning my gaze down towards the ground

While I ruminate about the cost

Of the blatant contradictions found

There are some things in this life

That we are forced to accept

But that certainly doesn't mean

That I ever could forget.

Chelsea

Chelsea
charcoal on cardboard
12 x 16
3/30/2017

Laurel

Laurel
charcoal on board
12 x 16
$175
3/28/2017

Wednesday Night Drawings

Wednesday night drawings
3/25/2017

Fuzzy

Fuzzy
charcoal on paper
1983 self-portrait

     This might be the earliest self portrait that I still have. No one ever called me Fuzzy until around ten years ago. But it stuck. Around the time I drew this, my Dad said he would pay me $50 to shave off my beard and I took him up on his offer. I was clean shaven the next time he saw me at Thanksgiving. He was shocked when I returned for winter breakand I had grown it back. I pointed out that nowhere in our verbal contract did it stipulate that I had to shave more than once (he was a lawyer). I tried to negotiate a new deal, with riders, but he passed. My face never seemed to get used to any razor and I quit shaving for good around ten years later. So I guess I've been fuzzy for over twenty years.

I Walk These Streets

I walk these streets

Day after day and year after year

Past the avenue houses

Where the neighbors wave

And onto the boulevard

As people come and go

Into the shops and salons

And restaurants and bars

Unaware that I am watching them

Talking on their phones

While searching for their car keys

I walk these streets at sundown

After the dreams of the morning have started to fade

While traffic whisks past in an endless loop

In a tired race to get home first

I sink into my collar as a chill closes in

And bury my hands into my coat

Under a rainbow of darkening hues

I bear witness to the dying of the light

I walk these streets

Alone at night while everybody sleeps

And the only sound I hear

Is the scraping of my shoes

And the humming of the lamp post

As the staccato of flashing yellow lights

Urge caution to a vacant landscape

Where tomcats prowl in the hidden shadows

And tree limbs sway with a muffled groan

Things are never where you left them last

They can't be found

No matter how thorough the search

Our regrets are carved into the mountainside

While elation trips and stumbles and falls

The world is wet and awash in grey

A somber mood settles in around me

I must be quite a sight to see.

As defiantly, I walk these streets.

Explosive Introspection

Explosive Introspection
tempera on paper 30 x 40"
1984 self-portrait

Beyond Appearances

Beyond Appearances
chalk on wood
1989 self-portrait

No Place to Run

No Place to Run
oil on bedsheet, 16 x 20"
1987 self-portrait

     By late 1987 I had run out of ways to stay in school and learn to paint. I finished my art teaching degree and there were loans to be repaid. My professor was encouraging me to keep taking classes and suggested I talk to the school office about some grant money and that he would recommend me. But I asked and found out it was only for people who did not have a degree yet, and I had two. I knew I'd have to give up my studio at the factory and all the camaraderie of painting with the other students. I did this painting that afternoon and think it shows my disappointment. But thirty years have passed and I'm still trying to paint, so I guess it could be worse.

Brighton Avenue Breakout

Brighton Avenue Breakout
acrylic on canvas 8 x 10"
1985 self-portrait

     My first real job out of college was in Industrial Design at small firm in Wakefield, MA Just outside of Boston. I packed up my ten year old Volvo and headed east on three or four days notice over Labor Day weekend in 1984. My car overheated in the Berkshires and I remember pushing it through several toll booths on the Mass Turnpike. I found an room in a house in the student neighborhoods of Brighton/Allston. I was paid a princely sum of $8 an hour. It was enough to get a new water pump, pay the rent, and buy lots of art materials, beer and Grateful Dead tickets (I saw 25 shows that year). My design career was brief, but it allowed me to make it on my own in the big city for a while, which I explored on foot, by rail and in my car. When my job didn't work out I found employment in an art supply store and a summer camp as craft counselor. I setup an easel in my cramped bedroom and started squeezing colors out of tubes. I painted this in a style where I laid brushstrokes on top of one another without mixing them much. I thought I might go back to school, but I was told by several colleges that I was not ready for graduate work. Depressed, I took one of my famous midnight walks and ended up rescuing a cat who lived another sixteen years. A few months later my new little buddy and I, dragging our tails between our legs, retraced my footsteps back home to Pepper Pike. I was the prodigal son, living in my parent's basement, trying and build up my portfolio, and learn how to paint.

Profiles in Painting

Profiles in Painting
oil on canvas, 24 x 30"

1987 self-portrait

     I was 25 years old when I painted this. I noticed there were changes happening to my jawline. The realization that one is not immune from aging, even while basking in the warm glow of youth, is never easy. My ponytail was in it's early stages then. That year I received my MA from CWRU and taught art at summer camp. While working at the YMCA, I was faced with the indignity of being told that I had to secure my hair back with bobby pins, which made me promise myself to never cut my hair too short for it to be adequately restrained with a simple piece of elastic, and I never have. I was the only guy with a ponytail teaching at any school I was ever assigned for twelve years. The cruel hand of time has ripped the hair out of my head and caused the skin on my face to sag even more. Someone guessed my age as 62 the other day. Still, I won't go quietly into the dark night. I ran 42 miles this week and haven't greyed too much. I can still drink all day and rock all night, OK, so not on a weeknight, but still! Back in 1987, when I painted this, the last year I was single, I didn't have much, but I remember being full of energy and gloriously excited about the future. I think I've spent the last thirty years trying to find a way to never stop feeling that way.

Eileen

Eileen 
charcoal on paper
12 x 16
3/11/2017

Fedora

Fedora
tempera on cardboard
1984 self-portrait

     I am continuing to unearth self portraits from days gone by. I painted a number of them years ago but haven't done one in a long while, until recently. I'm looking forward to sharing it soon. I have had reason to think about portraits a lot lately, and the power they possess. It's a bit of a Rorschach test as to how they are interpreted and misinterpreted by the subject and the viewer. There can be a great introspection and value judgement undergone by the artist in creating them. or not. I was interested to learn that Winston Churchill hated his official portrait so much that he had it burned.

The Lesser Angels of Our Nature

The Lesser Angels of Our Nature
chalk on paper, 11 x 14"
1985 self-portrait

When hope is crushed like an aluminum can 

And tomorrow sounds like a dirty word 

Can't muster the strength to make a stand 

Confidence shattered like a bottle hurled. 

I battle the demons inside my head

But bargain with the lesser angels

A stout oak breaks because it cannot bend 

And swiftly adapt to painful changes 

We are not enemies, but friends

The mystic chords of memory

Though passions may have been strained

Again touched, as they surely will be

Lost in the Shuffle

Lost in the Shuffle
Collage 6 x 9"
1981 self-portrait