RAC Design Studio

This is a painting of a magazine print of the sculpture The Angel of Death and the Sculptor.  The sculptor in this work by Daniel Chester French is chiseling on a sphinx as the Angel comes to relieve him of this mortal coil. 

My first real patron was an accountant named Charles Fears for Grace Church in Manhattan. He paid for several trips to India with his purchase of my work. Next to him is a cover of the Cambridge University Monthly Magazine.  I loved painting Chip in two directions at once.  The tape is a classic trompe l'oeil trope.

This is a painting of my studio wall with 3 different kinds of landscapes. One a Corot on the far right, the second postcard is Williamsburg where I used to live. The third is a photograph I took of the Tenderloin in San Francisco and this mural of a medieval girl.  So this is really a portrait, a landscape, and a still life.  Troupe L'oeil has this magical post-modernism to it that is also distinctly an American tradition.

Here is my studio wall again with a San Francisco native: the Ghirardelli chocolate box with the Goldfinch by Fabritius on the cover celebrating its exhibition at the DeYoung Museum. Fabritius, a pupil of Rembrandt and an inspiration to Vermeer died in the Armory explosion in Delft in 1654. That's Amal Murgian in savasana on the left.

My acupuncturist Sparky, here on the right, is also a sea captain, a tenor, a classical guitarist, and an avid surfer here in the Sunset. On the wall are two postcards of my principal painting influences Morandi and Lennart.

This is the painting that exhibited at the John F. Peto invitational Trompe L'oeil Show.  This painting in particular demonstrates the peculiar Post-Modernist times we live in. There is such an abundance of images available from all periods of human history, and I can only understate this point of course. We live now with multiplicity and here I am only saying it lives on our walls and in our lives. 

This is really naughty, but my friend from art school in NY, Jen Maloney made this How are Things postcard and sent it to me. It's her painting of some very personal items. I repainted it, of course, trompe l'oeil style with my name on it instead.  The rest of the images are notes and magnets attached to my fridge.  The question "How are Things?" is both epistemological and phenomenological.  What is Life and what is this in front of us?  With the references to abuse mentioned perhaps we also ask how things are. Well.. things are bad.

This is a reference to the David Bowie film from 1983.  This painting is a series of rabid objects. The bust of Pope Clement IV from the Ashmolean seemed peculiarly venal to me underneath a postcard of a cat eating a bird by Picasso stuck to my studio wall with an Apple sticker.. with a bite taken out.

Of course this painting is all about this kid's back.  I saw this painting by Caravaggio in the National Gallery in London of a young boy being whipped.  The Baroque is full of images like this in chiaroscuro and its the kind of decadent sexy image of the the Lord that led us directly to the Reformation.