The Frog Prince
From the Summer Fabric. "His lips were rather chilly."
Unframed
Matted in white12" x 21"
$125..
signed & numbered
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Unramed
Matted,
11" x 14" - $40..
unnumbered, signed
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St. Dragon and the George.
We restarted the commissions David Jones had me paint for the Sea Gull Bar.
At the time I had just lost a friend. Lost as the friendship died. I searched but couldn't find who was at falt. It felt like I was betrayed.
The Dragon was inspired from a Labrador Retriever's hang dog look and the little lawn lizzards that scurried around my garden in the summer. The pose was first sketched out on a napkin, then on canvas.
My friend Tim (a drinking buddy) was suffering from a hangover. He had the right ashen face for the shamed/guilty character of The George.
I asked his partner Karen, to point at him in accusation.
Promising Tim some cool armor, I had to promise Karen a beautiful gown.
As I sketched them in on the canvas I realized the effect of the responsibility of making a promise and not keeping it was a big betrayal. I called Karen and asked if I could make her pregnant.
She was shocked at first then realized I was speaking of the painting. She said, "Yes, I could paint her so." then said, "Max, you had better settle down.
The painting became a favorite of Mendocino's participants in the shuffle. (More later.)
Unframed
Matted in white12" x 21"
$125..
signed & numbered
At the Gallery
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Unramed
Matted,
11" x 14" - $40..
unnumbered, signed
At the Gallery
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| Beauty and the Beast
Debbie was the most beautiful waitress we had in Mendocino. She was big and warm with a great loving heart. She had a noisy, all over the place love affair with the third grade teacher from the elementary school named Cory.
Cory admitted he was afraid to say, "I love you." - to anybody. Still the couple carried on for months acting out a splashy no-holds-barred love affair at dances, at the post office at the restaurant and in the little out of the way places in the village. Out of their sight and sometimes in the middle of it, we felt we were part of their movie.
They were open to being painted as Beauty and the Beast. They understood that it was the masks we wore that kept us from our own beauty.
I had a problem in painting the moment when the final mask came off. I knew it would take courage to get in there and do the work to drop or take the barrier that kept saying, "I love you" from being expressed.
It was Debbie's great laughter and sense of humor that gave me the key. It takes great energy to keep love away. That power has no resistance to humor.
Unframed
Matted in white12" x 21"
$125..
signed & numbered
At the Gallery
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Unramed
Matted,
11" x 14" - $40..
unnumbered, signed
At the Gallery
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A Midsummers Night's Dream
The summer full moon shinning down on the Mendocino coast casts magic on us. The light is mesmerizing and it raises one's pulse.
Add the frolic of Shakespear's play, the beautiful people and music of a boogie in the fields and meadows around the village and you have the stuff that dreams are made.
Late Night Liz is Taitania, "Bottom" the donkey lived next door, I asked Doug Nunn to use his arm. Richie Pechner is "Puck". Paul McHugh is "Oberon" - Joyce LeSeine the Changeling.
It was summer - everyone wanted to play along.
Unframed
Matted in white12" x 21"
$125..
signed & numbered
At the Gallery
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Unramed
Matted,
11" x 14" - $40..
unnumbered, signed
At the Gallery
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| The Hopi Corn Maiden
Not only was this the first of the "American" fairy tales it represented family.
The story explores the relationships within a Hopi Family - my "Hopeful" Family.
It is about the responsibility we have within a family - the roles we take as parents, children, extended relations.
Here a young girl must grind the corn, the maize, into flour good enough for the gods who lived in the distant mountains. The son had to take the flour and bake it good enough for the same gods. The family's support depended on how good each child perfomed or the god would come and take the child away. I bound the family together in behavior but also in a spiritual awareness.
Here my extended family posed for the story. Yvonne Pepin, Sonya Popow, Earl and Kennie Leak. The Kachini's hands are the hands of Karen Hand. Those are my hands holding the basket of corn.
Unframed
Matted in white12" x 21"
$125..
signed & numbered
At the Gallery
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Unramed
Matted,
11" x 14" - $40..
unnumbered, signed
At the Gallery
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Johnny Appleseed
This is the second of the "American" fairy tales.
These stories are less likely to have magic as the tales are more more ledgend and song than myth.
Johnny was a real person. Some say he was the first land developer. School children hear of him blissfully planting trees to have food for the pioneers to eat. Older people believe he planted them to entice folks to far away places with the possibility have haveing ready makings for alcohol - applejack. There are always secondary readings to fairy tales.
The back road from Ukiah to Mendocino passes through the ridges of the valley into the Comptche area. It is filled with apple and fruit trees. In the spring it is breathtakingly beautiful. I could understand why Johnny would have wanted the job of planting these trees regardless of what their use would be.
This fellow, David Onstadt, had a most open and cherry face. He was as I saw Johnny Appleseed. The ridges above Comptche-Ukiah road are like early America on the edge of a population growth.
Unframed
Matted in white12" x 21"
$125..
signed & numbered
At the Gallery
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Unramed
Matted,
11" x 14" - $40..
unnumbered, signed
At the Gallery
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| Alli Babba and the Forty Thieves
The gennie was David Jones, the owner of the Sea Gull. The 40 plus thieves were all the movers and shakers, the good natured elders of Mendocino. This was the only fairy tale with a big enough cast to complete the commission for above the bar.
There is a litny of names.
You just gotta buy my memoir.
Unframed
Matted in white12" x 21"
$125..
signed & numbered
At the Gallery
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Unramed
Matted,
11" x 14" - $40..
unnumbered, signed
At the Gallery
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Row, Row, Row your boat . . .
I had moved to Hawaii to try living there. Four months away from Mendociino my good friend David Clayton died. I spun out in grief. My friends back home did too.
David Jones commissioned me to do David's Memorial Portrait.
Here it is with all his friends, his good humor and his love of architecture.
Unframed
Matted in white12" x 21"
$125..
signed & numbered
At the Gallery
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Unramed
Matted,
11" x 14" - $40..
unnumbered, signed
At the Gallery
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