The Man in the Malt 1977

This is where it all started. As a teenager in the 1970's painting held a less than prestigious place in my conciousness. I learned about what was cool from my peers in high school. This would have been airbrushed artwork on the sides of vans and post hippie album artwork by illustrators like Roger Dean and his numerous psudo surreal album covers and caligraphy for the prog-rock band Yes. I also learned that Dali was cool but neither me nor my friends knew anything about any other surrealists, or art history. The only other major modern artist who's name was familiar to me was Pablo Picasso, and he was not understood, and therefore reviled among my peer group and family members. I had little interest in art as I knew it then. Through an inspired painting teacher at the age of 17 who gave us a taste of the history of modernism through painting exercises in the style of the modern masters, from Monet and Impressionism, through Picasso and abstraction, I learned the language of paint and found that I was powerfully drawn to learn to speak it. One and a half years later I had learned enough to concieve and execute this painting which was completed in the first week of January, 1977. This was my first major work of art and the beginning of my self awarness as an artist. The assignment was open ended exploratoin into photo realism, as the final for a life painting class. My subject was my close friend, life long companion in the High Sierra, and spirit guide, Don Flaherty, who had shocked us all in 1975 or 1976 by, for health reasons, eliminating sugar and processed foods from his diet. I chose this painting as a humerous and ironic way to do his portrait. I learned much about the spirit in painting and the magic of the touch of the brush to the canvas, and about color and form and contrast in the following 31 years, but I've never made a better work of art!

oil on canvas
48 x 72