A few months ago a friend told me about a painting his fiance absolutely loves and he wanted to know if it was something I could reproduce so he could surprise her with a special gift.
This was quite a project and I now have a lot more understanding of what these classic painters went through in order to realize a vision.
The original painting is 47″ x 47″ oil on canvas and resides in a museum of art on Portugal. The story goes that it was originally auctioned for an asking price of $170 which no one wanted to pay so it stay with the auction house until a museum employee saw the painting and offered $10,000 for it has been safe and sound since then.
Here’s the original:
As you can see, there is a tremendous amount of attention to detail and it took him nearly two years to complete this piece.
I was asked to make my reproduction in a brighter orange and I did my version in approximately six weeks.
A few years ago I was walking in Venice, California with my daughter and her boyfriend. I looked across the street and saw a building in the shape of binoculars. I asked my daughter’s boyfriend to go do me a favor and run flat out on the other side of the street because I wanted to take a photograph of the building with him running in front of it for a piece of art I was planning to make out of it.
This is it…..
No Distance is Too Great.
Years ago I was in Aruba and was wondering around the marina and looked over to my left and saw an unusual sight. A restaurant had a full size sculpture of a cow on it’s roof with a antenna on the cow’s back.
Very unusual indeed. So, I photographed it and four years later I decided to make a painting of it. This is it. A 16″ x 20″ oil on canvas painting I like to call “TV Cow”. Enjoy!
"TV Cow" - 16" x 20" Oil on Canvas painting
Years ago I photographed a flower that came out of a catus plant that I thought had seen better days. One day it wasn’t there and the next day it was. I decided to paint it. Here it is.
Oil on canvas - 16" x 20" painting - Cactus Flower
I happened to be watching a 125 GP motorcycle race recently that took place in San Marino. Motorcycles are one of my passions and I did race a 888 Ducati for a couple of seasons. Just club racing, not pro but a hell of a lot of fun.
Anyway, this race was between two very fast 125 cc Grand Prix race bikes and one of them was a “seasoned” winner and one of them had never gotten on the podium either as a race winner, second or third place.
As the race wound down to the final three laps the two of them traded 1st and 2nd places around the 2.4 mile track a number of times playing cat and mouse for the last few minutes. Great fun to watch.
The final lap was sensational because they each were very capable of passing one another at certain areas of the track and they each were very aware of each others talents and resolve to win.
On the last two turns before the straight to the checkered flag the racer who had never won a race pulled in front of the veteran and it looked like he was the sure winner. It looked like he was a winner as well to him as he came on to the straight and looked behind to see his rival on his tail and watched as he slip streamed out to actually win by 1/200th of a second. I paused the screen and took this photo to show how close it was.
Just when you think you're the winner...you're not!
I watched as the beaten man pounded his tank in disgust knowing he had failed to win by such a small margin. I don’t proclaim to know everything there is about racing but everyone I’ve spoken to including the famed Keith Code always said to keep your head down and look forward for a number of reasons. Foremost because the effect the body has on speed when you raise it up in the air as this racer did. The body acts like a sail and cuts into your speed as the wind hits it.
I believe the man who came in second could have won if he had just kept his head down and allowed his bike to keep the speed it had to run a certain win to the checkered flag and his very first Grand Prix Podium first Place win!
So, I guess this could be taken as an excellent metaphor here as well. Those who win generally keep their head down and eye on the goal and don’t allow distractions to get in the way. One would hope this second place racer has learned a very valuable lesson.
This is third “gun” in a series I’m producing for an upcoming show. This is an 11 x 14 oil on canvas sketch painting.
Toy squirt gun #3 - oil on canvas - 11 x 14
Burning Desire - oil on canvas - 24 x 36
For quite some time now I’ve been noticing ordinary things that can become interesting pieces to transform into artwork. I was given a bunch of colored pencils wrapped in a rubber band and I imagined it as a large colorful painting. For months I’ve been using toy squirt guns to shoot water at a cat to remind him to stay off the kitchen island. They are very colorful and have almost a ray gun quality to them. I’ve finally decided to make oil painting sketches of the guns and here are the first two. Hope you enjoy them.
Oil on canvas board - 11 x 14 - Toy squirt gun #1
Oil on canvas board - 11 x 14 - Toy gun "squirt"
I put in a search to see what I would get for “oil paint”. There were the usual paintings one would think you’d get and then there were some other images that ranged from sexy women covered in paint to globs of paint and then also pictures of pizza with olive “oil” being poured on to the slices.
But, the most interesting image for me was this one:
The REAL value of money
As you can see, the value is illustrated by goods, services, actions and just about anything you could think of making me think money has a different value for everyone. Yes, it’s exchanged as energy you create by giving some service or product for some of it, but is there another value here?
The big question of the day seems to be whether or not Apple will survive it’s founders departure.
I’ve read numerous quotes from him over the years and his viewpoints on design, business, creativity and consumer awareness are simple and striking. Here’s one of my favorites;
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
What do you think will happen after Steve leaves Apple? I want to think he’s left some very competent people there to carry on his vision and add some of their own to as well. Based on this leader’s views, I don’t think he’d have inferior staff in his company.
What do you think?????
