I’ve always been a narrative artist, from the earliest stages. At this point I can’t imagine painting an image and a story being in there.

As you can see from all the attached sketches, that ‘knack’ has to be worked at quite hard!

I’ve always liked him, but it wasn’t until I started going back and posting these pieces on Open Museum that I realized just how often I’ve gone to Watteau’s work for some sort of inspiration. He was never one of those artists I’d have put in my top ten, like Rembrandt, Ribera, Michelangelo, etc., but perhaps he should have been on the list. His work is quieter, more genteel than I usually prefer. God knows, Boucher and Gainsborough are probably next…

It is important to leave some possibilities open. Who he is looking at or away from, what he is thinking, what the puckered look means on his face… all of these things change depending on what it is he is doing.

Haha, Kent! The artworld has easily imagined itself without representational painters like you and me for quite a while. Painting has been declared dead several times in my lifetime, but stubborn fools refuse to listen. Somehow, smearing colored mud on a surface seems to be an irrepressible human endeavor. The internet might kill it, though it will hardly be the only art that falls.

I think the blog would have to be in French, and mine sucks (pardon my French).

“Savage Mojo”!! Sounds like a culinary hit. We used the oranges in salad dressings and cooking fish and poultry. They imparted a unique flavor to whatever they were used in. Of course, it was the roots of that tree that continually clogged out sewer lines…

Thanks, Leonard! Hey, I even got a growling dog in there!

Thanks for the complement, and for the review. There was one review there before. When I read it I cried like a baby! When a perfect stranger reacts like that you don’t feel that all this outpouring of creative energy is for nothing.