"Queenie and Wiley"

These are Ed's dogs. Queenie is part Queensland Heeler, really sweet, happy and drinks too much coffee. Ed thought Wiley looked like a coyote, hence his name. He's also known as Wi Lee. Queenie is a wild girl, loves everybody and can't get enough affection. Wiley was an abused rescue dog so he only recently let me pet him and I've known him for about four years. 

"River"

This is Jules' new pup River who is a chihuahua and dachshund mix. When she told me about him I thought he'd be pretty strange looking but he's quite a handsome lad and can't wait to meet him in person. He's part of my "H" piece being angelic. I used a brand of canvas that has a coarser texture than I am accustomed to. Because the voids in the weave are bigger I was having difficulty getting things defined but I like the softer look it creates.  Thanks to Russ for generously photographing this one too. Acrylic on canvas, 16" by 20".

"Hound"

This was an image I saw in a magazine and was part of a photo for an ad so I don't know who the dog is. I just liked the way the dog looked and wanted some painting practice. Friend Russ photographed this for me. Shooting art is quite difficult. Just a few of the problems are that colors shift, the texture of the canvas can create weird patterns and tiny highlights, and thick dark paint causes a shiny area, so he did an amazing job. Acrylic on canvas, 18" by 14".

"H"

Good friend Mary Brent wanted to have breakfast with myself and another friend, Bente. As usual with MB, somehow that breakfast turned into doing a project. I think I mentioned that I was struggling with a kid's ABC book and she started talking about how we should do an ABC book for adults that was based on uplifting ideas. She and Bente are writers. We started with A and they wrote some things that were so creative I was amazed. I did a digital piece incorporating an angel but somehow didn't feel satisfied with the results. So when we worked on H, I just let it rip and went a little crazy. This is the results. They haven't seen it yet and may flip out. I have done pieces in the past that have incorporated collage elements and some 3-D items, so this isn't a totally novel approach for me but the images are so nutty that I was laughing while I was painting.

"Flaming Yellow Moon"

This hot rod was a challenge because of the large yellow area, yellow being particularly sensitive to contamination by other colors and creating different shades is more difficult than most other colors. Getting ovals to look right is also a challenge. Using templates or projecting a photo makes it a lot easier but besides taking a little life out of the image I feel like I'm not interpreting the information as much as reproducing a picture so I just eyeball everything. 28" by 32" acrylic on canvas.

"Blown Rat"

Being the son of a motorhead it was only natural that I would have an avid interest in cars and have drawn them since I was six. I regularly got in trouble for drawing in class and it was usually cars or motorcycles I was drawing. This painting was done when I was going through a photo realism phase, something I enjoy doing every now and then as a technical challenge. The word "rat" is hot rod slang for a large displacement Chevrolet engine and I have no idea where the nickname came from. Being that he was a Ford fanatic my father would not have been pleased that I was painting a Chevy engine.

"Letter From Home"

All of the chair paintings were inspired by the natural light in the loft I lived in as well as the area itself. There is a phenomenon that has become typical.  Artists move into large cheap spaces in a grimy part of the city that most people avoid and create an interesting and somewhat safer environment so younger adventuresome non-artists start coming around drawn by good cafes that move in and pretty soon developers take an interest in it and then it becomes a booming area and after a while the artists can't afford to live there anymore. This was happening when I moved to Emeryville. It was maybe a year after the changes had begun but there were still undeveloped places and some really sketchy areas that you didn't want to be near after dark. It wasn't unusual to see abandoned things like furniture lurking in a shadowed stairway or freeway overpass, so seeing things in shadows provoked the ideas for these paintings. 54" by 60", acrylic on canvas.