Sold

There is some life in the art world still. I have sold, through my gallery Tirage Art, my painting of Million Article Thompson. In the eighties, when D J Waldie and I were roaming the southland looking for points of interest, we came upon this sign in deepest south central LA (then known as Watts), on Vermont Ave. What a wonder and a mystery: the elaborate diction of the sign, the sheer size, and it's persistence down through the years. In the mid 2000s, when I was ready to paint that image, I returned with camera to see if the place still existed. Remarkably, it did, though the marginal enterprise of hardware store was gone, replaced by the "Coolie Indian Club". The wonderful sign, too expensive to tear down, persists, having survived earthquakes and insurrections. The man in the painting, one of my first additions of a figure, was from the mid 2005 photo shoot. He's eyeing the picture-taking white boy on the meridian with suspicion--DEA, ICE, CRA? Some kind of threat, surely. But Million Article will protect him.

Another painting in the Artist Eye Laguna show

Puerto Vallarta Tree. A scene along the Malecon, in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. A composite of a couple of images, one of the tree and phonebooth, the other of a man selling a fruit flavored drink dispensed from a gourd (and very tasty). I brought them together in this view of the Malecon, the promenade along Banderas Bay in PV.