Recent Paintings

Recent Paintings
Paintings made during the last year are reproduced here.

GO TO Paintings in Process to see ALL states of any recent painting.

"Doublethink" (2019 No.3, state 2), oil on canvas, 58x58 inches {"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." -George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty Four" (1949)}

"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}

"Seriously?" (2018 No.10, state 14), oil on canvas, 49.8x62.5 inches {"All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously." - Hermann Hesse, "Reflections", ed. Volker Michels, 1974}

"Chaos, Stillness & Prayer" (2018 No.9), oil on canvas, 54x36 inches {"Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm.... an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction." -Saul Bellow, "Writers at Work: Third Series", 1967}

"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"}

"Along for the Ride" (2018 No.7), oil on canvas, 65x53 inches {"Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong... and just go along for the ride." - Philip Roth, "American Pastoral"}

"The Intervening Tick" (2018 No.6), oil on canvas, 49x33 inches {"Is that where wise men want us to live; in that intervening tick, the tiny slot that occurs after you have spent hours searching downtown for that new club and just before you give up and head back home?" - Billy Collins, "The Present", from "New Ohio Review" 2017}

"Adjective" (2018 No.4), oil on canvas, 77x64 inches {"As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out." - Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson" (1894) chapter 11}

"Chocorua" (2018 No.5), oil on canvas, 40x64 inches {"A substitute for all the gods, This self, not that gold self aloft, Alone, one's shadow magnified, Lord of the body, looking down, As now and called most high, The shadow of Chocorua" - Wallace Stevens, "The Man with the Blue Guitar", verse XXI}

"Weoman" (2018 No.3), oil on canvas, 43x48 inches {"I could not get a rhyme for Roman, And was obliged to call it Weoman." -Marjorie Fleming, "Sonnet"}

"Catch-22" (2018 No.2), oil on canvas, 41x48 inches {"If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to." - Joseph Heller, "Catch-22", (1961)}

"Cave" (2018 No.1; state 6), oil on canvas, 68x53 inches {"At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Bernice Bobs her Hair" (1920)}