Recent Paintings

"Four Definitions" (2022 No.2, state 05), oil on canvas, 58⅝x54⅝ inches, {"I am reminded of four definitions: A Radical is a man with both feet firmly planted—in the air. A Conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A Reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A Liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest—at the command—of his head." -Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), radio address to "New York Herald Tribune Forum", 26 October 1939}

"Silence, Exile, and Cunning" (2022 No.1, state 13), oil on canvas, 48x57 inches, {"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile, and cunning." - James Joyce (1882-1941), "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916)}

"Tonstant Weader Fwowed Up" (2021 No.10, state 13), oil on canvas, 56x62¼ inches, {"And it is that word 'hummy', my darlings, that marks the first place in 'The House at Pooh Corner' at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up." - Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), in "The New Yorker", 20 October 1928, reviewed by Dorothy Parker as "Constant Reader"}

"Measure Anew" (2021 No.9, state 06), oil on canvas, 54½x54⅛ inches, {"I had become a new person; and those who knew the old person laughed at me. The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went in with their old measurements and expected them to fit me." -George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), "Man and Superman" (1903)}

"Honorable Terms" (2021 No.7, state 11), oil on canvas, 52x59⅞ inches, {"The roots of reason are imbedded in feelings — feelings that have formed and accumulated and developed over a lifetime of personality-shaping. These feelings are not a source of weakness but a resource of strength. They are not there for occasional using but are inescapable. To know what we think, we must know how we feel. It is feeling that shapes belief and forms opinion. It is feeling that directs the strategy of argument. It is our feelings, then, with which we must come to honorable terms." - James E. Miller, Jr., "Word, Self, Reality: The Rhetoric of Imagination" (1972)}

"Fool's Cap Too Long" (2021 No.6, state 3), oil on canvas, 63x57¾ inches, {"We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions.... But life is a sincerity. In lucid intervals we say, 'Let there be an entrance for me into realities, I have worn the fool's cap too long.'" - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), "Use of Great Men," from the collection of essays, "Representative Men" (1850)}

"Gonna Speak to the Crowd" (2021 No.5, state 25), oil on canvas, 64¾x57½ inches, {"I'm gonna spare the defeated — I'm gonna speak to the crowd. I'm gonna spare the defeated, boys, I'm going to speak to the crowd. I am goin' to teach peace to the conquered. I'm gonna tame the proud." - Bob Dylan, "Lonesome Day Blues" (2001)}

"The Opposite of Indifference" (2021 No.4), oil on canvas, 54x51 inches, {"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. Because of indifference one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that's being dead. His or her neighbor are of no consequence. Their hidden or visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the Other to an Abstraction." - Elie Wiesel, "US News & World Report" (27 October 1986)}

"Stubborn & Egotistical" (2020 No.4), oil on canvas, 67½x55 inches {"If we've learned anything from the best-selling 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' children's book series, it's that those who see themselves surrounded by idiots are usually idiots themselves." -Jakob Augstein, "Stubborn and Egotistical" (Spiegel Online, 3/25/2013)}

"Inertia to Movement" (2019 No.6, state 4), oil on canvas, 64.5x64.75 inches {"Emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light, or from inertia to movement, without emotion." -Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1955, translation R.F.C Hull}

"Gunfire Across My Consciousness" (2019 No.5, state 9), oil on canvas, 48.5x32.5 inches {"My mind is just like a spin-dryer at full speed; my thoughts fly around my skull... Images gunfire across my consciousness... I jump in awe at the soul-filled bounty of my mind's expanse." -Christopher Nolan, Irish Writer on his reasons for writing "The Eye of the Clock", in November 8, 1987 "Observer"}

"How's It Gonna End" (2019 No.2), oil on canvas, 60x33 inches {"And I want to know the same thing everyone wants to know, how's it going to end? Drag your wagon and your plow over the bones of the dead out among the roses and the weeds. You can never go back, and the answer is no, and wishing for it only makes it bleed." -Tom Waits, song lyric}

"The Doctrine of Liberty" (2019 No.1), oil on canvas, 67x59.5 inches {"I believe there is a golden thread which alone gives meaning to the political history of the West, from Marathon to Alamein, from Solon to Winston Churchill and after. This I chose to call the doctrine of liberty under the law." -Anthony Sampson, "The Changing Anatomy of Britain", 1982}

"Burnt Norton" (2018 No.8), oil on canvas, 66.5x70.5 inches {"What might have been is an abstraction; Remaining a perpetual possibility; Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory." -T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"}