"Outside" - the "Mystery Project" revealed

Last night, June 17, Medical City Hospital in Dallas opened their new Childrens' Hospital wing with a big to-do including my painting "Outside", which hangs in the first floor reception area.
My reasoning for the title, other than the obvious reference to the imagery, is that being "outside" is equivalent with being healthy. "Outside" in the fresh air, running, playing, all those things we associate with kids being outside, and what being treated in the hospital and getting better will help us get back to. That's what I was thinking, anyway.
Here are some photos of the affair, which included a very nice steak dinner, and some elements in the waiting/reception area.
All three dimensional elements were created by the Museum Arts company of Dallas.

This is the "official" professionally photographed image of "Outside", as opposed to my previous shots from my own camera. The painting is 36 by 60 inches, acrylic on canvas.

I think this is an ice sculpture.

A tall fairy greeted partiers.

Becky and me at the Big Shots' table.


Some of our table-mates.

A large tree dominates the first floor reception area.

Inside the tree are two "funhouse" mirrors.

The tree continues to the second floor. I don't think the "fairy" is usually there.

Becky with another "fairy". Apparently they weren't supposed to speak, since none of them did.

A few of the party guests.

Ad agency Avrea Foster art director Lisa Goin, account executive Cheyenne Dazey, a young lady affiliated with the hospital whose name temporarily escapes me (I'll list her name when I remember it) and me.


The second floor admittance desk features a beehive motif.

Butterflies circle the ceiling.

A large catepillar in the waiting area.

These circular features on the floor of the waiting area were very cool.

The "Healing Garden" is just outside the waiting area.

This is the admittance desk, featuring an "ant farm".

"Outside" is at the end of a long hallway leading to the elevators to treatment facilities.

Here I am with "Outside" framed and on the wall.

Drawing Inspiration

I'm quoted and a few of my pictures are featured in this new book by writer/artist Michael Fleishman.
It's available on Amazon at this link.
This cover illustration is by David Bowers.

Jury duty

Earlier this week I was called up for jury duty. I usually get sent home early, but this time I got as far as the actual courtroom and was actually considered for the jury. I didn't get picked, which was good, since it was a heavy criminal case, but that's as close as I've ever come to being "in the box" as the judge kept calling it. While waiting I did these sketchbook drawings of my fellow potential jurists. I don't think any of them were picked either.

Street

Favorite paintings

Sometimes it's not so much a "favorite painting" as it is a favorite artist. Or at least an artist that has been a favorite. That's the case with Frank Frazetta, who died last week. This is one of my favorites of Frazetta's paintings, but hardly the only one. Like the work of Salvador Dali, my enthusiasm for Frazetta's has dampened with time. That doesn't mean I don't respect his work, though, nor does it mean I deny the impact his paintings had on my development as an artist.

As a kid I was engrossed in comic books, during the period that "fanboys" call the Silver Age. Among other things, they showed me that one could make pictures for a living. I originally thought I would only need to concentrate on pen and ink, the medium of comics (this is an example of a very juvenile brain at work at that time) so I had no interest in painting. My mom had been trying to interest me in taking oil painting lessons from a sweet, late middle-aged lady in our small hometown. I resisted for a long time, until I discovered "Creepy" and "Eerie" magazines, as well as fantasy paperbacks, with their amazing painted cover illustrations. My tiny geek mind was turned around, as I saw the need for paintings skills as well as pen and ink. I started taking the classes. I painted the usual prerequisites of floral and fruit still lifes, copies of barn-speckled landscapes and the occasional conquistador. When Ms. Prince, the teacher, decided I was sufficiently competent with those subjects I could find subject matter I wanted. And away we went.

With the images of Frazetta and Jeff Jones dancing in my head I pumped out canvas after canvas populated with monsters, werewolves, ghosts, haunted castles silhouetted against full moons, all to my teacher's and mom's mixed reactions of horror and amusement. At least it opened my fairly closed mind to other possibilities, something for which I thank Frank Frazetta.

Oh, and here's another favorite.

"Show me your papers"

We have to control our borders and control immigration. But that doesn't mean we throw the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments into the garbage bin at the same time. The Arizona law which permits police officers to, having stopped anyone because of some infraction, require the person to show proof of citizenship is heaving those amendments into the wastebasket.
The only people who are going to be asked for their "papers" are those who "look" like they may be in the country illegally. What constitutes such a "look"? Good question. Since I'm caucasian I could rob a bank in Arizona and, after being caught, it's very very unlikely I would be asked for my citizenship papers (I don't know what I would show anyway...my birth certificate? I don't carry that with me). Someone with that "look" could be stopped for a broken taillight and find him/herself being under suspicion based on looks alone. So, it doesn't matter if the person is a citizen, in fact could be a multigenerational citizen of the U.S., that person is presumed guilty until proven innocent.
That's the point of this drawing. The officer is demanding the "papers" of a petroglyph which has been in this region for the past 1000 years, before there was a U.S. to be a citizen of.

Hmmmm...again.

I read today that "Iron Man" and "Iron Man 2" director Jon Favreau is directing a movie set for a summer 2011 release titled, annoyingly enough, "Cowboys and Aliens", apparently based on a graphic novel of the same name. It has nothing to do with me and of course the title is a coincidence, but I do want to get this out to the universe now. I thought of the phrase first.
Not that such wordplay is all that difficult, and seems like an obvious match when you think of it, but still. Since I work in relative obscurity, when more famous entities coincidentally come up with the same phrase, name, style, image, whatever, it appears that I'm stealing from them. I hate when this happens.

Here's the image, nevertheless, this version painted in 2008.

I used the same idea on these "Circus Punk" dolls created for the 2005 "Circus Punks Rule New York" exhibition at The Showroom in, yes, New York.