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I’m a WORKING class ‘kid.’  My father worked in the refineries and prayed for a double shift to pay for new brakes or a new fridge. I’ve been a starving artist. Worked construction.  Dug ditches. Sold clothes. Pumped gas.  Drove taxi nights. Waited tables. And held a number of excellent ‘real’ jobs – big corporate jobs.

 

Truth is I’ve lived 25 years of a great and fascinating corporate life. And, after that, another – so far – 20 years of an enterprise of my own creation – The Luxury Marketing Council: a bringing together of luxury brands (1,000 luxury brands in 43 cities worldwide 6,000 CMOs and CEOs) that deeply understand Mr. Stanley Marcus’s timeless definition of luxury: the best that the mind of man can imagine and the hand of man create.

 

My business ventures and adventures have given me the freedom artistically to do WHATEVER on my own terms: not a boast but an expression of gratitude. 

 

The ‘saying’ among aspiring artists in Manhattan, and I suspect globally, is DON’T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB. I didn’t and haven’t.

 

As a result I’m happy to say I have never lost my passion for and my joy in the making of art: painting (mostly acrylic on paper), sculpture (air hardened, hand sanded potter’s clay) and poetry (16 books).

 

RETAIL TIES THAT BIND is a series/theme I’ve pursued and continue to return to since the 70s.  The paintings are what Marshal McLuhan (a friend and hero) called a ‘put on,’ a ‘send up,’ a gentle poking fun at that global business icon: the shirt and the (theoretically) matching tie. 

 

Fully realizing that it has been and is my business side that ’butters my bread’ and pays for the cat food, this series - RETAIL TIES THAT BIND - is an just an excuse to play with color; not get too fussy about technique; burn what I hate and save what I hope ‘works,’ strikes me as true. And, of course, repeat the process. Accept accident.  And play.

 

The paintings are headless not (I hope) mindless and all are scalable.  A five inch by ten inch piece could easily be five foot by ten foot.  I intend them to be decoratively joyous (with a tip of the hat to Matisse and - I read Art Forum -  I realize not very ‘fashionable’these days). I want them to provoke a gentle smile.  Above all I hope viewers will enjoy the colors as I have. And to continue to enjoy them over time.

 

I see them as landscapes. The head that is always missing is the multicolored head of God.  Up to the viewer to fill that blank in on their own terms.