The Bloke
This is a painting that is close to my heart – before I finished it today I walked outside with my dogs, thinking about bringing the painting to a close, and all over my house, were hundreds of lady bugs. Hundreds. I looked into it, and apparently in the fall lady bugs release a pheromone that attracts other lady bugs so that they can unite and go in to hibernation together. Still, I couldn’t help but feel that the occurrence was a sort of blessing. I went down and put the final touches on the red polka-dot hat – the last thing I painted was the flame of the welding torch. I’m pleased with the way the painting came out, I carried it to a certain point about 2 months ago and then the painting fell into a slumber, and I was working on other things. Four days ago I was struck, I guess the word is “inspired”, and the painting woke up – I worked on it just about non-stop for the past four days and got it to a point where I feel good about it. Pleased to say, here is it, The Bloke, circa 1985.