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Monday, March 15, 2010

The artist as a young man.

As previously stated, one of my goals is to once again use art as a creative outlet, and as a way to spend quality time with my wife.

My artistic endeavors started earlier in life however, and I would like to share some of my work with you.  The following works are all from my first known artistic compilation, which remains untitled, and which appears to have been bound and stapled in approximately 1987.  All work is crayon on paper.







"Superman is punching somebody.  He's going to die.  A plane came over and dropped bombs."

Notice the Big Bird like creature's sense of despair as he is punched by Superman.  To survive this assault would only postpone the inevitable - a zebra striped jet bomber is about to unleash it's munitions on the scene below, all while pulling its cryptic "backwards-e backwards-p K" banner.


"It's Thanksgiving time again.  ET is back for Thanksgiving and astronauts come in."

This work is pretty much self explanatory.  My memory is fuzzy, but I seem to remember Spielberg hiring me as a consultant during the production of E.T.



"It was a long time ago.  There was a big war.  A lot of F-4 Thunderbirds dropped bombs."

Thunderbird was actually a name of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, so I assume this is my tribute to the Vietnam War.  Notice the inscription in the upper right - Boom or Book?  As an artist, I like giving my viewers little mysteries to ponder.



(Untitled)

While most families were visited by Santa Claus, mine was apparently visited by the elves from the Strawberry Shortcut video.  Notice the subtle shading of our turquoise walls and boot-wearing tennis racket.  Also, in a nod to Leonardo Da Vinci's method of secret writing, I have penned my own name backwards - see if you can find it.


"This is a solar system.  It is in space.  Martian go on it.  There was a space war near it."

This predated my 11th grade Astronomy class by more than a decade, yet the attention to detail and science is astounding.



"This is a desert with a camel in it.  It's burning hot and the camel is looking all over for water.  Instead of finding eater he found silver.  And then when he looked for gold he found a whole pile of it, it was a whole mountain of gold."

Simply amazing.



"I been to a carnival and there was a volcano ride and there were little boats and they were on the hot lava and you get in them and go charging down."

This is not even remotely true.  I can only assume I painted this under duress, as my "I BAN OT R CAKRNVER" is clearly a plea for help.


There is probably some debate as to whether my artistic ability has improved in the two decades since these works were first unveiled.  Technically, yes - my fine motor skills have mostly improved.  Creatively, or perhaps inspirationally, no - if I was going to draw anything it would probably still be a fighter plane or a space war.

2 comments:

  1. Amazing? Jury's out, but entertaining in a self-referential bio-fantasy sorta way...I actually read this and could relate. Always wanted to use "self-referential", no idea what it means but I've heard it a coupla times....

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