Fine Art Editions |

Office Stress

Posted on October 11, 2012 by adminMay 2, 2015

This was the first of three images I created on the theme of contemporary “hells”. It collects all of the nightmares of a horrible office environment where the poor workers are attacked by the technology, surveilled and abused by some sort of boss that appears on multiple television screens. I created this image during the last year I lived in the province of Mantua. During the 18 years I lived there, a huge amount of the landscape was turned into shopping centers and commercial venues. Finally we got tired of the traffic and moved to a sleepier town in Umbria.

I was intensely aware of the negative effects of modernization in Northern Italy, which gave a lot of inspiration for these works. Also, office work was never a strong point for Italians and the amount of paperwork needed to operate a business has gotten way out of hand in all of Europe. The backdrop for the work consists of real public offices. They make perfect fit with their sterile and dehumanizing architecture, so different from the historical buildings. Even prisons were prettier.

This image is available as a limited edition print. Click here for more information.

Seneca

Posted on October 10, 2012 by adminMay 2, 2015

I drew this portrait from an extremely impressive bronze bust in the Naples Archeological Museum. At the time it was simply labeled Seneca, but I later learned that the attribution was disputed. The online presentation of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples describes the state of discussion in the following way:

Nowadays the prevailing interpretation is that the head is a portrait of a dramatist due to the presence, on a copy now at the Museo delle Terme at Rome, of an ivy wreath, the prize for theatrical contexts: some scholars specifically identify him as Aristophanes, because the type in question is associated, in a double herm of Villa Albani, with the portrait of Menander; according to other experts, it could be a portrait of Aesop, Hesiod, Callimachus or Apollonius of Rhodes. We can therefore be quite certain that the person depicted must have been extremely famous, as is proven by the large number of copies to survive, which number a total of forty. From the qualitative point of view, the head displays excellent workmanship; rather than a copy, it might well even be the original from which all the others are reproduced, and should be regarded as a portrait of reconstruction in which the accentuated wrinkles and folds of the face and forehead of the man, the intentionally unruly locks and the wrinkly neck contrast openly with the unwavering, penetrating gaze. The original should be ascribed to the trend of realistic virtuosity, dateable to between the third and second century BC.

It is nice to have a portrait drawing that you can label as any of a number of fabulous classical writers, depending on your needs. I have made this drawing into a limited edition print, click here for more information.

Acis and Galatea

Posted on October 10, 2012 by adminMay 2, 2015

I have always loved Händel operas and one of my favorite is Acis and Galatea. I did this drawing as a traditional classical composition, but used the gigantic character of Polyphemus to stretch the perspective. It is one of my most complicated traditional compositions. The character of Polyphemus sings in Georg Friedrich Händel’s popular 1718 setting of Acis and Galatea, an English language pastoral opera or masque with the libretto set by John Gay to Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Here, the jealous monster scares the lovers in the aria “I rage, I melt, I burn” and then monstrously courts Galatea with his “O ruddier than the cherry”. Polyphemus is a gigantic cyclops that personifies the Sicilian volcano Mount Etna, and “stabbing to the heart” refers to the mythical battle of the gods and giants. Both the single eye and the stabbing wound refer to the gaping caldara of the volcano.

Below is the amusing libretto for the two songs:

Recitative:

I rage, I rage, I melt, I burn! The feeble god has stabbed me to the heart. Thou trusty pine, prop of my god-like steps, I lay thee by! Bring me a hundred reeds of decent growth, to make a pipe for my capacious mouth; in soft enchanting accents let me breathe sweet Galatea’s beauty, and my love.

I Rage, I Melt, I Burn

Aria:
O ruddier than the cherry,
O sweeter than the berry,
O nymph more bright than moonshine night,
Like kidlings blithe and merry!

Ripe as the melting cluster,
No lily has such lustre;
Yet hard to tame as raging flame,
And fierce as storms that bluster!

Polyphemus realizes how he frightens the lady he would love, and when Acis sings “Love sounds the alarm” he furiously interrupts their sweet duet, now a trio, and murders his opponent in a rage.

The segment is from a recording on the Archive label by John Elliot Gardiner.

St. George

Posted on October 10, 2012 by adminMay 2, 2015

This was one of my first fully original classical compositions. I attempted to create it as a work of pavement art on the streets of Rome in 1983, but was never able to get a finished shot due to incessant rainstorms. it was a very popular image when I introduced pavement art to the U.S., and I recreated it a couple of times. Once was for the documentary “Chalk Magic”, which launched my art program for the public schools in 1984-5. I often used the image after that for demonstration purposes.

Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Catholic (Western and Eastern Rites), Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox churches. He is immortalized in the tale of Saint George and the Dragon. Saint George is somewhat of an exception among saints and legends, in that he is known and respected by Muslims, as well as venerated by Christians throughout the Middle East, from Egypt to Asia Minor. St. George is also acceptable as a secular figure and I was able to use the image in public schools where other religious images would have been unacceptable.

St. George Pavement Drawing, Rome, Italy

The tonal drawing (above) is available as a limited edition fine art print. Click here for the direct link.

Pokerdog Retriever

Posted on October 9, 2012 by adminMay 2, 2015

This is the first of a series of pokerdog images I am creating exclusively for the AFA Gallery in Las Vegas. The individual images will be combined into a large-scale composition once all of them are complete. The first series of “dogs Paying Poker was painted by C. M. Coolidge, commissioned in 1903 by Brown & Bigelow to advertise cigars. The nine in which dogs are seated around a card table have become derisively well known in the United States as examples of mainly working-class taste in home decoration.

Some of the compositions in the series are modeled on earlier famous paintings of human card-players by such artists as Caravaggio, Georges de La Tour, and Paul Cézanne. For my own composition, I am putting the dogs in the sort of opulent period costumes that would have been popular in the time periods of the original masterpieces.

Pokerdog Bulldog

Posted on October 8, 2012 by adminMay 2, 2015

This is the second of a series of pokerdog images I am creating exclusively for the AFA Gallery in Las Vegas. The individual images will be combined into a large-scale composition once all of them are complete. The first series of “dogs Paying Poker was painted by C. M. Coolidge, commissioned in 1903 by Brown & Bigelow to advertise cigars. The nine in which dogs are seated around a card table have become derisively well known in the United States as examples of mainly working-class taste in home decoration.

Critic Annette Ferrara describes Dogs Playing Poker as “indelibly burned into … the American collective-schlock subconscious … through incessant reproduction on all manner of pop ephemera. On February 15, 2005, however, the originals of A Bold Bluff and Waterloo were auctioned as a pair to an undisclosed buyer for US $590,400. (Not a bad price for schlock). Some of the compositions in the series are modeled on earlier famous paintings of human card-players by such artists as Caravaggio, Georges de La Tour, and Paul Cézanne. For my own composition, I am putting the dogs in the sort of opulent period costumes that would have been popular in the time periods of the original 17th century masterpieces.

Pokerdachs

Posted on October 6, 2012 by adminMay 2, 2015

This is the third of a series of pokerdog images I am creating exclusively for the AFA Gallery in Las Vegas. Click Here for the link. The individual images will be combined into a large-scale composition once all of them are complete. The first series of “dogs Paying Poker was painted by C. M. Coolidge, commissioned in 1903 by Brown & Bigelow to advertise cigars. The nine in which dogs are seated around a card table have become derisively well known in the United States as examples of mainly working-class taste in home decoration.

Critic Annette Ferrara describes Dogs Playing Poker as “indelibly burned into … the American collective-schlock subconscious … through incessant reproduction on all manner of pop ephemera. On February 15, 2005, however, the originals of A Bold Bluff and Waterloo were auctioned as a pair to an undisclosed buyer for US $590,400.00, (Not a bad price for schlock). Some of the compositions in the series are modeled on earlier famous paintings of human card-players by such artists as Caravaggio, Georges de La Tour, and Paul Cézanne. For my own composition, I am putting the dogs in the sort of opulent period costumes that would have been popular in the time periods of the original masterpieces.