Evolution of a Painting

“Fun in the Sun” oil stick on board 13” x 47.5”

I did the painting "Fun in the Sun" sometime around 1990. It was a painting of a group of men and women at the beach sitting on folding chairs. Friends at the time were convinced that the figure on the far left was a self-portrait and the far right was my wife, Gabi. I can't remember if that was intentional or not, but they do look something like us at the time.

Starting a little more than a decade later, I made a few other paintings based on it. Sometime around 2004 I did a large series of digital art works done by scanning photos of my earlier paintings and then manipulating them with Paint Shop Pro. "Digital Triplets" was one of those. It was based on the figure third from the left in "Fun in the Sun." I changed him into a woman and copied and pasted the figure twice, and digitally drew into it. I thought of the center figure as breaking into molecules like people from "Star Trek" being transported.

“Digital Triplets” scanned and manipulated photo

Next came "Doublemint Gerbils." It is the man on the left in the first painting again and the woman in the yellow bikini doubled.

“Doublemint Gerbils” Oil stick on paper, 10” x 13” 

With “Parents of Narnia,” done in 2006, I began to abstract the figures more.

“Parents of Narnia” oil on canvas, 21” x 25”

Finally, I made one of my favorite paintings, “Champagne Summer,” in October 2006. With this one I think I pushed the abstraction as far as I could and still be recognizable as figures. I thought of it as celebratory, champagne bubbles. Thus the title.

“Champagne Summer” oil on canvas, 48” x 60”