Once again I am using one of my perfect online hunks, Mark (obviously not his real name), who gave me permission 3 years ago to use his images as part of my artwork. I designed this digital tropical montage based in part on Andy Warhol’s method of superimposing the layers of his serigraphs slightly out of register. Here the layers of my work are purposefully manipulated so that they are misaligned. The original work created using the Adobe Suite of software had over 98 layers created from 45 photographs I had taken of beach, flowers, trees, and my own distressed paintings, as well as the image of Mark.

The red and white splashes are based on the same cosmology that I have explained in previous works.

For those few individuals who have bothered to manipulate my blog thoroughly enough to find these images, I hope you enjoy this new one.

Beach Dude

The perfect young man relaxes and smiles and looks out directly into our eyes on the perfect day in paradise. Ah-h-h-h-h-h!

But what are all those white and red spots about?

I know they are everywhere, looking out from their dwelling places into the warm tropical spaces that surround us. Here, today, in this homophobic culture that denies them the right to marriage and family, they desire love, need love, hope for love. Sometimes they are so crippled by internalized homophobia they don't know how to love themselves much less anyone else. However, I believe that someday God will grant us all, even his various bigoted evangelical Christian and Catholic church members the wisdom to love one another no matter our various God-given sexualities.

Tropics #2

Lush green everywhere, and tropical blooms in the middle of January. I have been taking photographs wherever I go in South Florida, but the flowers everywhere are truly amazing, especially the bougainvillea and hibiscus. The Latin influence on architecture, food, and style is ubiquitous, and, sexual tension is evident in the air I breathe.

Of course, there is more to this montage. I used digital images taken of distressed painted surfaces that I’ve been doing for years. They were created after seeing old buildings in Mexico when Rebecca and I traveled there in the fifties and sixties. The weathering of brilliant colors encrusted within one another exposing pealed pastel patches, and partially revealed images of old posters buried in layered history amazed me.

Additionally there are those enigmatic spatters of red and white paint that imply a dance between and among sexual acts, life, procreation, pleasure, and death.

an old man’s dream of youth – complete with a magnificent dancing young man. I’d like to be there, to possess him, to be him, to do it over again and play the gay card instead of the passing card.

My own family has been creating quite a hoopla about my artwork. So have some of the citizenry here at THE BIG NEEDLE. One sweet old grandma told me “You will roast in Hell for all eternity!” Thus, I've created "The FOIL MAN roasts." He's roasting like a baked potatoe in Hadies. It's a central balance design because that is a Pennsylvania Dutch way of composing space.